New Heritage Minute pays tribute to the Grads, legendary women’s basketball team
TORONTO — Kay MacBeth was just a baby when the Edmonton Commercial Graduates won the world championship title in 1923, but by the time she joined them at age 17, the team — known as the Grads — had been dominating women’s basketball for more than a decade.
When they played their last game in 1940, the Grads had been national, North American and world champions for 17 years and following men’s rules — rather than the more restrictive “ladies’ rules” — for about as long. The women, who ranged from their late teens to their 40s, won 93 per cent of their games, making them the most successful sports team in Canadian history.
The club is once again in the spotlight, this time as the focus of the latest Heritage Minute — a 60-second film highlighting key moments in Canadian history — being released Wednesday.
MacBeth, the team’s lone surviving player, said the Grads, who at one point would be recognized by strangers on the streets of Edmonton, weren’t in it for the fame.