ORANGE PARK - As a junior at Orange Park High School in 1961, Phyllis Canova Pruitt, did not know she would be considered a trendsetter at some point in her life.

"We started in 1961 as the first girls basketball team at Orange Park," said Pruitt, who was at Orange Park High's season opener last Thursday that was also a girls and boys alum night in the new Raiderdome. "I never played basketball in my life at that point, but we wanted to see if we could get a team together."

Pruitt remembered Bruce Horne as her first coach in 1961 with the girls team practicing in the parking lot.

"We didn't have a gym," Pruitt said. "We only won one game and that was against the Florida Deaf and Blind team, that was funny back then."

Pruitt noted her games were played at Clay High with practices at numerous gyms around the county.

Pruitt, 81, who taught first grade at Lake Asbury Elementary, met her husband, Sam, 78, in Atlanta, and traveled the world with him with his Air Force career.
Pruitt attended college at Shorter College in north Georgia before starting her teaching, first at Atlanta, then back at Lake Asbury.

"I wasn't a basketball star, just the only senior," said a chuckling Pruitt, who noted she wore the Converse Chuck Taylor high top sneakers back then. "I was a guard, and I didn't get to shoot. It was a total different game."