By Jeff Meade ’72
This fall marks the 50th anniversary of girls sports at St. Thomas/Father Gabriel Richard High School.
But the Fighting Irish didn’t just limp out of the gate that memorable 1973-74 school year. They dominated the newly formed Tri-County Conference, winning league championships in basketball, volleyball and softball.
Girl basketball actually had its roots the previous fall. St. Thomas played a couple of games against nearby schools in the fall of 1972. Carmel Borders, who taught American literature, history and freshman English at the high school, was the first coach.
“Carmel really encouraged us to play basketball,” said Amy (Anhut) Hadley ’73. “She said to go home and tell your daddy, ‘Daddy, I want a basketball for Christmas.’ ”
When St. Thomas took the court as an official team in the fall of 1973, there was instant phenomenal success. The Fighting Irish posted back-to-back undefeated regular seasons in Carmel Borders’ two official years as head coach, reaching the state semifinals in 1973 and 1974. Their success helped earn her the women’s basketball head coaching job at the University of Michigan for a three-year stint.
“I grew up in Louisville,” said Carmel, who now lives in Texas with her husband, Tom. “There were probably 80 (Catholic) parishes in Louisville and each one had girls basketball. I got to start playing basketball in fifth grade. It was big.
“When I was a freshman in college, I went back and coached my eighth-grade team in Louisville. That little team won the Catholic League. I loved coaching. My sophomore year, I went and coached the JV at my high school. It was an honor.”
Carmel attended Ursuline College in Louisville for two years, then transferred to the University of Michigan. She graduated in 1972 and was immediately hired at St. Thomas as a teacher and coach.
The Borders’ son, Joshua, was 2 or 3 years old at the time and attended child care right down the street across from St. Thomas. Then Carmel would pick him up and bring him to practice. “When he was about 4, he asked me if boys could play basketball,” she recalled.
Almost no one in the Tri-County Conference could even give the Irish a battle as they regularly won games by 30 points or more.
“They were just a great group of girls,” Carmel said. “You built relationships with them. If you saw somebody might be interested, you’d urge them to come out for basketball. They were interested in learning new things about basketball. You could team them. The girls were so dedicated and they played so hard. They took it seriously, and this was before Title IX (took effect).”
Carmel also built relationships with other coaches in the Detroit area. She remembers her Class D team traveling to Detroit to scrimmage a big Class A school “so we would get roughed up a bit but show them how good they actually were.” She also fought to get the girls coverage in the Ann Arbor News, the local newspaper. “I even started trying to write the story for them,” Carmel said. “I kept pushing to get the Ann Arbor News to recognize this incredible team that I had.”
The 1974-75 school year was a whirlwind for Carmel. She taught at St. Thomas, coached the Fighting Irish girls basketball team in the fall and coached the Michigan women’s basketball squad in the winter.
“I had more support at St. Thomas than I did at Michigan,” Carmel said. “What they paid me (at St. Thomas) wouldn’t even pay for Joshua’s babysitting, but it was such a wonderful community. The parents were so supportive and the kids were great.” Among the standouts for St. Thomas were Terry Conlin, who went on to play four seasons at Michigan, and sisters Natasha and Kris Cender. Natasha played collegiately at Purdue and Michigan. Carmel was only the second coach in Michigan women’s basketball history. In her three years there, she grew the program from an eight, to an 18 to a 25-game schedule and went 12-6 her middle season. But she didn’t even have an office when she went to Michigan and worked out of her home. The Wolverines frequently practiced on a rubber floor. “The girls were wonderful, but professors wouldn’t even let them make up tests (after road trips). We had girls majoring in engineering and nursing and the professors wouldn’t give them any slack to travel,” Carmel said. “We had nine on the team but only seven for (some) road trips. The girls were resilient and they played for the love of the sport.”
Carmel resigned her Michigan coaching job in 1977 to spend more time with her family. She had a short stint coaching at Ann Arbor Greenhills and also coached her children. The Borders have three children and seven grandchildren. “I love basketball,” Carmel said. “It’s really fun right now because my son teaches middle school (in Texas) and he coaches.”
The pioneers of girls sports continued to win that 1973-74 school year. Paula Switek coached the Irish to the TCC championship in volleyball with a team that featured four Conlins. Then coach Mary Ellen Ramker led her team to the league championship in softball that spring.
St. Thomas would go on to win five girls league titles in its three years in the Tri-County Conference (two each in volleyball and basketball, one in softball). The boys also won eight league championships during that stint (three each in basketball and track, two in football), giving the entire athletic program 13 titles in three TCC years.
Mary Ellen Ramker was an elementary teacher at St. Thomas who started the volleyball program there and also was an assistant basketball coach. She went to become an assistant basketball coach at Michigan where she had played on the Wolverines’ club team in 1969-70, three years before basketball became a varsity sport.
“That was a long time ago,” Mary Ellen said. “It was a lifetime ago. I remember Natasha (Cender) was extraordinarily tall. At Michigan we had to drive ourselves and the team to the games. We had to practice in the intramural building.”
Father Gabriel Richard High School would go on to win seven Michigan High School Athletic Association girls state championships – three in softball, two in volleyball and one each in basketball and track and field.
St. Thomas graduate Jim Hess ’72 coached the Fighting Irish to their first two girls state titles. Those came in softball in 1979 and 1982. He also coached St. Thomas to the state finals in girls basketball in 1981. Jim met his wife Jeanne at St. Thomas where she was the volleyball coach from 1976 to 1980.
His Gabriel Richard teams included future collegiate players Paula DeFord, Ann O’Sullivan, Martha Rogers and Alicia Seegert, Michigan’s first softball All-American and the State of Michigan’s Female Athlete of the Year for 1987.
“They definitely made me a great coach,” Jim said. “In basketball, we would have won state (twice) but we ran into Leland. Their team was like (the movie) Hoosiers. Their coach was the men’s basketball coach at Northwestern for 10 years. He had five Division 1 players.
“We beat (Ann Arbor) Pioneer and we beat all the Class A schools. That was the most fun I ever had coaching. We got paid in holy cards. There wasn’t much money in it.”
Jim and Jeanne Hess moved to Kalamazoo where he coached women’s basketball at Western Michigan for eight seasons and won the Mid-American Conference title. Jeanne was volleyball coach at Kalamazoo College for 35 years and won six MIAA championships. Future baseball Hall-of-Famer Derek Jeter great up in their Kalamazoo neighborhood.
The Hesses’ sons Andrew and Kevan were both drafted by the Detroit Tigers and played three years of minor league baseball. Jim, who helped pitch St. Thomas to the 1972 state baseball title, has been a Realtor for the last 33 years.