Little Mary
by Bob Brail

            On October 9, 1939, The Wentzville Union printed an unusual announcement.  In the midst of the typical small town news stories about local politics, the social calendar, and the weather, the newspaper reported that nineteen year-old Miss Mary Schierbaum, the daughter of Oscar and Katie Schierbaum, had recently left their home on what is now Highway DD to join the Helen Stephens Olympic Co-Eds basketball team.   When Mary Schierbaum made that journey, she became Boone-Duden country’s first and, as far as this author knows, only female professional basketball player.

   

             Mary Schierbaum grew up in a basketball-playing family.  Of the eight Schierbaum children, she and three of her siblings (Ella, Alvia, and her brother, Dorris) played on their family farm at a hoop by the well house and later at Wright City High School.  In fact, the Wright City superintendent of schools arranged for a bus to pick up the Schierbaums each day so the school could have a winning basketball team.  Schierbaum did not play for the high school varsity team until the last game of her freshman season, but when she finally walked on to the court as a varsity player, she made quite an impact, scoring thirty-two points and leading her team to victory.  The next three years Mary Schierbaum would score 1,706 points, about twenty per game, to lead her Wright City team to victory after victory.  In her senior season, the team won twenty-eight games and lost only once.  Their average margin of victory was twenty-five points.  One sportswriter wrote of Schierbaum, “The big girl is good and makes Wright City almost impossible to beat.” 

    

Mary Schierbaum

           

              Just how big was Mary Schierbaum?  Newspaper articles subsequent to her high school career place her height between six feet two inches and six feet four inches, although the lower height is probably more accurate.  Schierbaum weighed about 180 pounds and was described by one writer as “graceful.”  Helen Stephens, who lived in Fulton, attended one of Schierbaum’s games and soon made a trip to the Schierbaum farm to talk with Mary.  When Stephens arrived at the farm, she found Schierbaum, always the farm girl, sitting in an apple tree!  Soon after a contract was signed.

    

            The team Mary Schierbaum joined, the Olympic Co-Eds, was well-known in the Midwest.  For a time, the team was managed by Abe Saperstein, the famous promoter of the Harlem Globetrotters.  Their coach, Helen Stephens, an Olympian and a native Missourian, was known as “The Fulton Flash” because of her amazing speed.  Stephens, who was six feet tall and weighed 190 pounds, was the owner of fourteen world records in women’s athletics and winner of two gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  Stephens also played on the team.  She was joined by Issy Payne, from Green City, Missouri, who could make shots from forty feet and was marketed as the “world’s greatest player.”  Casey Osburn, sister of the 1932 Olympic discus medalist Ruth Osburn, was five feet ten inches tall and from Shelbyville, Missouri.  Mickey Onson, from Rhinelander, Wisconsin, was known for her ski jumping prowess.  “Chief” Ione Riley, a Cherokee, hailed from Ketchum, Wisconsin.  Schierbaum was soon given the nickname “Little Mary.”  One sportswriter would describe Mary Schierbaum as “probably the outstanding member of the team.”

     

The Olympic Co-Eds

             The team’s season lasted from late fall to early spring and must have been incredibly fatiguing.  Mary Schierbaum played her first game on November 8, 1939, and sixteen thousand miles and twenty-two states later, her initial season ended after approximately eighty games.  Mickey Onson later stated that each player was allowed one suitcase and one basketball bag, and that the team traveled as many as 580 miles a day in automobiles.  Their monthly salary, which apparently was not always regularly paid, did not include meal money.  In Schierbaum’s second season, 1940-1941, the Helen Stephens Olympic Co-eds played games in thirty-three states.   Usually the Co-Eds played local men’s teams, and they won more than half of their games.  Schierbaum left the team after two years due to its physically demanding lifestyle and low pay.

   

            Although the newspaper articles of the day describing the Co-Eds are often characterized by sexist comments about their appearance, the writers also display an underlying respect for the women’s basketball abilities.  “They definitely did not play like ladies” was how one writer put it.  Another said, “The Co-Eds apparently paid little attention to the Marquis of Queensbury rules.”  The women “asked no quarter from the boys” and sometimes used a “neck lock and pile driver” on the men.  Another sportswriter felt that “the girls were as rough as they come and more than once they broke up [their opponents’] attack with a stranglehold.  The rough-house Rosies were [Stephens] and ‘Little Mary’ Schierbaum.”  Ironically, years later Mickey Onson would recall Schierbaum as the “nicest girl on the team”!

      

             Mary Schierbaum graduated from the nursing school at Lutheran Hospital in St. Louis in 1946 and was employed as a registered nurse by the Western Cartridge Company of Alton, Illinois (later the Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation).  She also worked as a nurse at the Alton Western Military Academy and in private nursing.  In 1947 she rejoined the Co-Eds, because they limited their games to the St. Louis area, so she could continue working as a nurse during the day.  After she left the Co-Eds, she continued to play basketball in recreational leagues against men, often as many as six games weekly, and averaged nearly twenty points per game. 

    

             Schierbaum had many interests and hobbies.  She was a very good artist and drew comic strips for her family.  Schierbaum loved life in the country, especially her animals and liked to tell humorous stories about them.  Other hobbies included fishing, swimming, horseback riding, and softball.  Mary Schierbaum died in 1974.

            Sports fans today often think of the history of women’s basketball as the story of the WNBA, but that league is, in fact, a rather recent development in the sport.  It is unlikely that any of the WNBA’s players have ever heard of “Little Mary” Schierbaum.  Schierbaum, nonetheless, is an important character in the story of women’s basketball in America and someone of whom the Boone-Duden area should be proud.

Sources: access.newspaper.com; The Life of Helen Stephens: the Fulton Flash (Sharon Hanson); newspaperarchive.com.  Most of the information in this article was taken from the personal scrapbook of Mary Schierbaum, which was provided to the author by her niece, Penny Pitman, whom this author thanks.  Other information was received in emails from Pitman and another niece of Mary Schierbaum, Carol Bales, whom the author would also like to thank.