"Play your very best. Do not put Roberta into bad pinches----"
"But the captain of the East High team sees our weak point, and forces the play that way," complained Jess Morse.
"Of course she does. And you would do the same were you in her place," said Mrs. Case, with a smile. "But above all, if you can't win gracefully, _do_ lose gracefully! Be sportsmanlike. Cheer the winners. Now, the whistle will sound in a moment," and the instructor hurried away to speak to the referee.
"Oh, dear me!" groaned Roberta. "My heart's in my mouth."
"Then it isn't where Sissy Lowe, one of the freshies, said it was in physiology class yesterday," chuckled Bobby Hargrew.
"Sissy was asked where the heart was situated--what part of the body--and she says:
"'Pleathe, Mith Gould, ith in the north thentral part!' Can you beat those infants?" added Bobby as the girls laughed.
But they were in no mood for laughter when they trotted out upon the basketball court at the sound of the referee's whistle. They took their places in silence, and the roars of the Central High boys, with their prolonged "Ziz--z--z--z----Boom!" did not sound as encouraging as it had at the beginning of the first half.
Basketball is perhaps the most transparent medium for revealing certain angles of character in young girls. At first the players seldom have anything more than a vague idea of the proper manner of throwing a ball, or the direction in which it is to be thrown.
The old joke about a woman throwing a stone at a hen and breaking the pane of glass behind her, will soon become a tasteless morsel under the tongue of the humorist. Girls in our great public schools are learning how to throw. And basketball is one of the greatest helps to this end. The woman of the coming generation is going to have developed the same arm and shoulder muscles that man displays, and will be able to throw a stone and hit the hen, if necessary!
The girl beginner at basketball usually has little idea of direction in throwing the ball; nor, indeed, does she seem to distinguish fairly at first between her opponents and her team mates. Her only idea is to try to propel the ball in the general direction of the goal, the thought that by passing it from one to another of her team mates she will much more likely see it land safely in the basket never seemingly entering her mind.