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Anna Lyons Sullivan
Girl’s basketball in the 1920’s and 30’s was vastly different from today’s game. Each team had 6 Class of 1928 Athlete  players and the court was divided into 3 areas, with 2 players assigned to each area. Anna Lyons Sullivan was the outstanding Harrisonburg High School player of this era. Miss Sullivan played for the Blue Streaks all 4 of her high school years, and was by far the team’s dominant player. Records for that time are incomplete but enough survive to show her dominance on the court. The Blue Streaks of 1928, Anna Lyon’s senior season, went undefeated with a record of 8 wins and no losses. In the final 7 games the Streaks outscored their opponents 302 points to 219. Anna Lyons scored 229 of those points, outscoring by 10 points the total of their opponents in those games. After graduation Anna Lyons went on to Harrisonburg Teacher’s College, which became Madison College and now is JMU. There she played for 4 years under JMU Hall of Fame coach Althea Loose Johnson. During those 4 years the team lost only 2 games, and Anna Lyons was captain of the 1931 team. Individual records for those years are largely lost, but surviving records show that Anna Lyons had games of 14, 20 and 22 points in the 1932 season. In addition to basketball, Anna Lyons played 3 seasons of field hockey where she was the starting right half-back. She was selected to play in an all-star game in Washington, D.C After graduation from college, Anna Lyons began a 41 year career teaching Math at HHS before retiring in 1974. |