Girls’ basketball: One hundred years of titles at Long Beach Poly
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Officially, Long Beach Poly’s victory over Danville Monte Vista on Saturday at Arco Arena in Sacramento represented the Jackrabbits’ fourth California Interscholastic Federation state title.
Unofficially, the Jackrabbits have been winning state titles for 100 years. Poly’s first title is believed to have come in 1909, the year in which French aviator Louis Bleriot flew across the English Channel and Robert Peary became the first known person to reach the North Pole.
According to school historian Fritz Rapp, Poly (then known as Long Beach High) won a state title in 1909 by splitting two games against Bakersfield. Long Beach won the first game, 18-5, on March 27 and lost the second, 11-9, on April 2. Long Beach was awarded the title because the aggregate score of the two games served as the tiebreaker.
Rapp said basketball started at the school as a girls’ sport, with the boys playing in the shadow of their female counterparts. In fact, in 1907 the Long Beach girls defeated the boys, 20-14.
The Long Beach girls were retroactively recognized by Cal-Hi Sports as the state team of the year for 1905 (when they finished 7-0), 1907 (7-0), 1908 (9-2), 1909 (14-1), 1910 (8-0) and 1911 (10-0). Long Beach also won the state title in 1910 by defeating San Francisco Lowell, 16-9.
--Ben Bolch