The American Spectator

The Fort Shaw contingent was housed in a school building at the Indian Exhibit. Visitors paid 50 cents to enter the grounds and watch them perform. Out of the Fair’s hundreds of entertainers and celebrities, the Fort Shaw girls were the singular delight of St. Louis residents. Visiting dignitaries and royalty insisted on visiting them at the Indian Exhibition.

This being the World’s Fair, site of the best of everything, it was decided a game would be played to determine a world’s champion. After all, the Fair also hosted the third Olympics (featuring a “savage’s shot put event” between a Japanese Aimu and African Pygmy, a contest curiously absent from today’s Olympics).

Joe Stremmel, a recognized authority on the barely decade old game of basketball, had coached Missouri college women’s teams to a string of impressive victories over other challengers. It’s fair to say the Missouri All-Stars he put together was the very best women’s team in the nation. Stremmel was a hardheaded character and took the game seriously. His girls were not Montana farmboys, they were athletes. His athletes.

Stremmel desperately wanted to win the media-hyped first World Championship, especially in his own backyard. But it was not to be. The St. Louis headlines tell the story:

Having conquered the world, Fred C. Campbell (“The Wizard of the Wild West Woods”?) and the girls returned to Fort Shaw. The latter finished school and lived full lives, many of them becoming nurses and teachers. Their descendants have recently erected a modest monument to the team on the Fort Shaw grounds.

And a hundred years later, when not consulting with his criminal lawyers or cashing ten million dollar checks, Kobe complains about Shaq’s big toe.

Call me old fashioned, but I’d find more inspiration in making the trip to the Montana monument than dropping $150 for a ticket to see Kobe.