One of Elberton’s greatest athletes will be inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame next winter when basketball great Patsy Neal is enshrined in the February ceremony.
Neal, an Elberton native, starred for the Lady Devils basketball team in the 1950s before going on to star at Wayland Baptist College from 1956-60. A pioneer of women’s basketball in the pre-Title IX era, Neal is one of the most accomplished athletes in Elbert history.
“If I was a bit younger, I probably would’ve been jumping up and down, hollering and screaming”, Neal said of her reaction to the news of her upcoming induction. “It’s just exciting. There’s something about being recognized by your own state, people that you know, that has a lot of meaning.”
As a Lady Devil, Neal was a GHSA All-Region and All-State selection, and led Elbert to an undefeated regular season with six 50-point games.
“The fans were fantastic,” Neal said of her time with the Lady Devils. “The gym was full just about every time we played, and we played before the men, but they came to watch the women just like they did the men. And it was great. I couldn't have asked for any better fan support.”
Neal badly wanted to continue her playing career at the college level, but opportunities for women in basketball were very limited at the time.
But her fortunes changed one day, when, “like a dream,” she saw a small paragraph in the newspaper about a Christian school in Texas that had just won the national Amateur Athletic Union tournament. It turned out to be Wayland Baptist, and Neal soon got in touch with then-head coach Harley Redin and secured a tryout.
It wasn’t long before Neal was a star at Wayland, then the only college in the country that offered full basketball scholarships to women. The team became known as “Hutcherson’s Flying Queens”, thanks to a local flying service, Hutcherson Air Service, sponsoring their flights to away games and making them the first collegiate sports team in history that regularly flew to road games.
Neal became a multiple-time All-American and a focal point of a dynastic Wayland team that went on a historic 131-game winning streak. She was also elected the first woman president of the student body and was homecoming queen.
Neal also represented her country on the international stage, serving as captain of the United States team in the 1964 World Basketball Tournament. It certainly makes you wonder why it took so long for her to join the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, especially considering she’s already part of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, AAU Basketball Hall of Fame and National Association of Sports and Physical Education Hall of Fame among others.
“I would love it if I had been inducted years and years ago,” Neal said. “Who wouldn't? But just the fact that it's actually going to happen, is good enough for me.”
Neal’s love for basketball ran deep, going all the way back to her days dribbling a ball in the dirt on her family’s farm as a child. She wanted other women to find what she found in the game, and penned a textbook called “Basketball Techniques for Women” while playing for the Utah Lakers, a Salt Lake City AAU team, although it resulted in the loss of her amateur status due to strict rules about college athletes’ earning potential.
Neal has gone on to publish seven more books, six of which are sports-related. She also started one of the first basketball camps for women in the 1960s and has had her writing featured numerous times in publications including the New York Times, Newsweek and the Washington Times.
Neal, who currently resides in Tennessee, said that the chance to reconnect with people from her hometown is one of the things she is most excited about regarding the upcoming ceremony.
“Seeing people from Elberton and being able to catch up on things, because I haven't been back there for years [is what I look forward to],” she said. “It will be just good to see some of my friends and some people that I had played with years ago. I think that will probably be the most fun part of all of it.”
Neal is appreciative of the rise in popularity that women’s basketball has seen in recent years, noting Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark and Dawn Staley’s South Carolina teams as some of her favorites, even if she has some reservations about the game’s commercialization.
“I wish that there was a little bit more fun still in it,” Neal said. “I guess I just loved playing basketball. It was so much fun. And I think now it's more like work or a job, and it should be, because they're getting paid to do it. But I wish there were a little bit more fun to it than they have today, because it seems like that sometimes it's just overserious.”
For someone who has poured so much of themselves into the game of basketball and accomplished so much, Neal’s induction is long overdue. Her work ethic, discipline and love for the game are evident in just about everything she has done during and after her playing career, and she echoed those same values when asked about her advice for the next generation of players.
“You have to be self disciplined because there's a lot of hard work involved, even though it is fun,” Neal said. “Preparation, if you don't prepare, you don't miss out on a lot of opportunities. And of course, teamwork, you've got to be able to be a team player…. If you've got good people around you, then you're going to end up usually making good decisions.”