A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

WHEN LINDA BARRETT (NEE WINTER) AND ELEANOR KING (NEE SQUIRES) met in the 1950s on the women’s basketball team at Memorial University, it was the beginning of a friendship that would last through the decades.

Under the encouragement of coach Doug Eaton, in 1958, the team was sent to a tournament hosted by Dalhousie University. They swept the tournament, winning every game, along with the overwhelming respect of the other Nova Scotia teams and their Memorial family back in Newfoundland.

“When we returned home to St. John’s, there were so many people at the airport, I wondered which celebrities were on the plane,” Mrs. Barrett (BA’59, B.Ed.’69) chuckled.

“We were given long stem red roses, driven around in a motorcade, we had our photo taken on the steps of city hall, all of our classmates and professors were there cheering for us,” Mrs. King (B.Sc.’59) recalled fondly, thumbing through a scrapbook she had left the phone interview to retrieve, moments before. “We were treated like royalty. And in those days, for the women’s team to be acknowledged in that way, that was just unheard of.”

Mrs. King made flattering comments towards Mrs. Barrett.

“Linda, she was just the star of the team,” the awe in her voice is clear. “She had a great hook shot. And I know she stayed on with the sport, she was a coach.”

He (Coach Eaton) was a big influence on my life… he was a man who was full of ideas. He was very strict with us, but he was kind, and good humoured, and really had more of an influence on us than he probably even thought.

Indeed, Mrs. Barrett was recently named one of the top 100 Canadian university women’s basketball players of the century, the umbrella body for collegiate varsity athletics in Canada. She was inducted into the Basketball Newfoundland and Labrador Hall of Fame in 1999 and the provincial Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. During her time as a student at Memorial, she received the John Lewis Paton Award in 1959 for her contribution to sports and her academic standing. She and her husband, the late Dave Barrett, were both inducted into the Newfoundland and Labrador Sports Hall of Fame.

She recalled her days as a student fondly.

“There were only five or six hundred students at Memorial at the time, up on the Parade Street Campus. I knew practically everyone in the place. All the students were together. Even to this day when I’m out and about, I see people from the good old days. I enjoyed every minute of my time in university. I loved it.”

Despite the skirts they wore on the half court women were permitted to play on at the time, Linda Barrett and Eleanor King played full court during their time at Memorial – athletically, academically and personally. Along with their fellow teammates, they were truly in a league of their own.

Carolyn Rompkey (B.Ed.’57), another star team member, recalled that the confidence Coach Eaton instilled in the team gave them spirit and the will to win.

“It all happened because of him. When I went to Memorial, I originally went because I wasn’t old enough to go into nursing. So, I was advised to go to Memorial, take a year, and then go into nursing. But when I got to Memorial, Doug Eaton got a hold of me,” she laughed. “I was a good athlete in all sports, and he looked at me and said, ‘You’re not going to become a nurse, you’re going to become a phys ed teacher.’ And that’s what I did! He was a big influence on my life. I had a wonderful time teaching. He was a man who was full of ideas. He was very strict with us, but he was kind, and good humoured, and really had more of an influence on us than he probably even thought.”