Elaine Myers Brown (seated) displays her Palmyra High School Hall of Fame plaque for field hockey (below) accompanied by her daughter, Lisa, during a visit to the home of Marva Jones on April 8.
On the practice field under the shadow of the historic Palmyra High School football stadium in 1952, a group of 18 young girls put together one of the greatest seasons ever – a perfect 12-0.
Led by inner left “speedy little Elaine Myers” and fullback Vonnie Gros, the school’s field hockey squad defeated Merchantville, Moorestown, Gloucester, Haddonfield, Haddon Heights, Woodbury and Mount Holly to win the first girls’ sports championship in Palmyra High history.
“Vonnie was an excellent teammate and athlete,” said Myers, a star on offense who still holds the school record of six goals in one game. “She always looked to hit it to me. We had a great team. All the players were good.”
Myers, now 90, praised the contributions of Gros, Barbara Evert Whitbred, Connie Evert Bring, Jeannette Lowe Chase, Yvonne Scott Borroughs, Mary Austin Holloway, Mary Witherow Hannan, Carol Erickson Ingram, Faye Start Wilson, Sally Alcott Dinn, Jackie Walker, Joan Bacon Rippey, Jane Rothblum Gregory, Eleanor Kemmerle, Ann Dignan Antos, Jackie Matthews and Gunn Smith and head coach Jane Kennedy.
Myers also was a power hitter and infielder on the 1953 undefeated Palmyra High softball team, was voted the Class of 1954’s athlete of the year, received the St. Joan Companick Unsung Hero award, and was inducted into the school’s hall of fame in 2002.
“Growing up in the 1950s, we all played sports,” recalled Myers, one of eight daughters of William John Wesley Meyers and Elizabeth Dudley Meyers, whose family home was at Race and Fifth streets, just blocks from the school. “There was nothing else to do but to play ball.”
“All of the families in the neighborhood were friends,” remembered Myers’ sister, Marva Jones, who invited Elaine and her daughter, Lisa Brown, to lunch in her Palmyra Harbour home on April 8. “We grew up together. We had a lot of fun. We played all the games: horseshoes, red rover, kick the can.
“We were always outside.”
The other Myers sisters included Clara, Marie, Marjorie, Gwen, Euteria and Genevieve.
Lisa Brown recently held a small surprise birthday party at her mom’s Burlington City home, then a huge 90th birthday party with 160 guests, including Myers’ classmates.
“This is history,” said Lisa, a great athlete herself at Camden Catholic, while looking through her mom’s scrapbook.
A graduate of Notre Dame University in Indiana, she played basketball for the Irish as a walk on. “We all had to watch (the movie) ‘Rudy,'” she recounted.
After Myers graduated from Palmyra High, she continued to play softball with the Diamond Daisies traveling team. “Ken Still was an excellent coach,” she remembered, who would tell her to “hit it in the woods.” The Daisies were an excellent squad that had lots of fun, Myers added, fondly remembering the verse of the Lionel Hampton song “Hey Baba Reba,” that they chanted during games:
“Of all the fish in the sea, I rather be a bass, and climb up on the seaweed and slide down, on my Hey Baba Reba.”
“I have enjoyed my life,” observed Myers, a trailblazer who helped shatter glass ceilings – along with Mary Austin Holloway and Yvonne Scott Burroughs – as the only three Black players on the field hockey team. Her father was the “first Black player” on the school’s baseball team, which had a quota of one African American at that time.
Jones compared his situation to that of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.
