The Grads Are Playing Tonight!: The Story of the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club [Paperback]

"...the team which holds the most victories in the history of North American sport. The Edmonton Grads were a women's basketball team that held North America's attention for 25 years as the team challenged preconceptions about gender and sport." Samantha Powers, VUE Weekly, January 19-25, 2012 "Over the years, the feats of the amazing Grads faded from memory. Few remember a team once heralded for many years as world champions... The wonderful new book by Ms. Hall, emeritus professor at the University of Alberta, provides an informative and richly detailed account of the women who were sports pioneers. It is authoritative and deserving of a wide readership. Tom Hawthorn, The Globe and Mail, January 29, 2012 [Full article at http://bit.ly/Aj34Al] "Three years before they were given the right to vote in Canada, a team of female basketball players in Edmonton started a 25-year journey of world-wide fame and victory, proving that women certainly had the mental and physical capacity to do more than stay prim and proper." Rebecca Medel, The Gateway, January 18, 2012 [Full article at http://thegatewayonline.ca/article/view/grads_basketball] When a team wins 95% of its games, it earns a certain place in sports history. The Grads are Playing Tonight! The Story of the Edmonton Commercial Graduates Basketball Club" discusses the domination by the Edmonton Grads for a quarter century under the guidance of J. Percy Page. Not only winning championships, they traveled the world to continue their domination. "The Grads are Playing Tonight!" is a strongly recommended pick..." - Wisconsin Bookwatch, February 2012 Hall's fine book brings the Grads to life - fierce competitors who played with joyful elan. The book is also a compelling portrait of the rough-and-tumble prairie city whose civic pride was awakened by the Grads' exploits. Bruce Ward, Ottawa Citizen, February 19, 2012 One of the strong points of the book is that it provides personal biographies of most of the players and staff, telling of their lives after basketball. Lavishly illustrated, it is a tribute to one of Canadas great teams and a memorial to its contribution to sports history. - Alberta History, Spring 2012 "Almost like a fairytale, this hard-to-believe story about an almost-invincible female basketball team and their committed coach, J. Percy Page (later Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta), comes alive in the pages of The Grads are Playing Tonight! Well-written and engaging throughout its ten chapters, the book focuses on not only the adventurous tales of the Grads, but also of Edmonton coming into its own as an important city in Western Canada. In this feel-good book there is something for everyone--sports fans, history buffs, feminists, educators, scholars, politicians, and readers who dare to dream the impossible. A story within many stories, The Grads are Playing Tonight! reaffirms a city is more than a place on the map--it is the people who live there and make it home. The Grads are Playing Tonight! will continue to play itself out in readers' heads long after they shut its covers." - Jury comments, Trade Non-Fiction Book Award, BPAA, June 2012. "Reading The Grads Are Playing Tonight!" was a nostalgic experience for me... M. Ann Hall's book is exactly how I remember the Grads: full of grit, enthusiastic about life, inspiring and proud. And they should be. The Grads were not simply amazing basketball players. They were transformative women of their time... They played in front of the largest sporting crowds of their time. Hall is a sportswriter, so her writing style is compelling, and she provides plenty of details on the team." - Tracey Peter, Herizons, Fall 2012

Between 1915 and 1940, the amazing Edmonton Grads dominated women’s basketball in Canada. Coached by J. Percy Page, they played over 400 official games, losing only 20; they travelled more than 125,000 miles in Canada, the United States, and Europe; and they crossed the Atlantic three times to defend their world title at exhibition games held in conjunction with the Summer Olympics in Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin. Meticulously researched and documented—including capsule biographies of all 38 women who played for the Grads over the years and over 100 photos—the story of the Edmonton Grads will enthrall fans of sport history and women in sport. M. Ann Hall is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she taught for over thirty years. She is the author of two previous books about Canadian women’s sporting history. “Your record is without parallel in the history of basketball. There is no team that I mention more frequently in talking about the game. My admiration is not only for your remarkable record of games won but also for your record of clean play, versatility in meeting teams at their own style, and more especially for your unbroken record of good sportsmanship.” James A. Naismith, the inventor of basketball “As a group of women basketball players, we were proud and happy to be members of this remarkable team, and I believe their exploits will never be equalled. When you finish reading this book, I’m sure you will agree with me.” Kay MacRitchie MacBeth, former Edmonton Grad