RHS Basketball 1,000 Point Scorers
It is interesting to note that Ridgewood High Schools girls’ basketball was an interscholastic sport along with boys’ basketball through a better part of the first two decades of the twentieth century. Because there was no gym space available at the Beech Street location of the then Ridgewood High School, gym space was negotiated by the girls and boys athletic associations at the White Star Athletic Club in Ridgewood for both the boys and girls teams. It is recorded the girls team played their first interscholastic game on Dec .22, 1906 and accumulated a 7-4 record for the 1906-07 season.
In 1907 the team joined the New Jersey Interscholastic League which included Hackensack HS, Passaic HS and The Orange High Schools. There is no concise record of the boys first games, but there is record of the 1909-10 teams being the main focus of interscholastic competition for those years. It was reported in the Ridgewood Herald on March 19, 1914 that the Ridgewood High School Girls Basketball Team defeated the Montclair girls’ team at Montclair in the state tournament by the score of 18-17 to give the Ridgewood girls their first win over the Mounties. It was significant because Montclair had been the New Jersey State Champions the three consecutive years prior to the RHS victory. Interestingly the RHS girls went on to claim the NNJIL title for the 1922-23 season becoming the first girls team to claim a championship on the girls side of the interscholastic athletic program. That team was inducted in to the Athletic Hall of Fame with the class of 2008.
The boys team was mentioned in the 1910 “Arrow” as the Maroon and White giving an indication that those colors were then interchanged with the original school colors of Red and White as indicated in the words to the Ridgewood High School Alma Mater in 1914. The colors Maroon and White were officially recognized in 1916 with the creation of the By-laws of the Ridgewood Athletic Association.
The girls’ team would disappear in the late 1920s and would not reappear as an interscholastic program until 1972 with the passage of Title IX legislation creating equal opportunity for boys and girls in all forms of athletic endeavors at the high school level. The girls program has prospered over the last 52 years and the boys program has had consistent success for more than 117 years!
Over that time, Ridgewood has produced many fine athletes on the hardwood, but only twenty one of them (Thirteen Girls and Eight boys) have attained the level of being 1,000 point scorers over the course of their careers. Obviously the transition of the rules and the nature of the game have changed over the years allowing for more scoring including the three point shot. The transformation of Ridgewood from a three year high school to a four year high school in 1986 also had an impact on the length of time some of our athletes would have in participating at the varsity level (only varsity level records count towards the 1,000 point total).
On the following pages please see the Ridgewood High School 1000 point scorers 1906-2024.
