Linda Lang Exley (left) sits next to former teammate Shirley Nunn (right) at a 2009 gathering of CHS players and coaches. The women are holding their jerseys, which were given to them after they broke Commerce High's career scoring records in 1960 and 1963.

The game stopped the 1963 night Shirley Nunn scored the go-ahead basket. She topped a career-high points record posted by former Commerce High teammate, Linda Lang, who broke the mark just three years earlier.

Nunn, a Commerce resident, recalled the game and the crowd’s embrace during the brief timeout. Her coaches, fellow students and parents, Raymond and Edna Nunn, praised the player’s remarkable effort.

The couple never missed a game, sat in the same seats at Commerce High’s old gymnasium, just seven years old at the time. Nunn’s mother recorded every basket her daughter made as a forward in the six-on-six game then championed as the only girls’ sports team.

“She took down every point I scored and she was right on the money,” Nunn said, recently.

The young woman finished her high school career with 2159 points. Lang earned 2020.Their coach Jeff Davis presented both women their uniform shirts at school ceremonies held after their final seasons. Their numbers would be retired, he told them.

“A couple weeks later, after the season was over, they presented me with my jersey,” Nunn said. “It was very special.”

Her pride was short-lived.

Four or five years after Nunn graduated, she returned to Commerce High where she attended a girls’ basketball game. The team wore new uniforms. The numbers displayed included the one she put on as a four-year starter: No. 25.

“I started asking around and told them this jersey is supposed to be retired,” Nunn said.

Davis no longer coached at the school, where officials told her they “lost the record.” The response stunned the woman who believed she’d always be credited for her part in making sports history at Commerce High.

After all, local news stories reported Nunn’s feat, the school’s 1963 yearbook referenced the record along with photographs of the team captain taking shots and receiving trophies. And for a brief minute or two, the game Nunn played stopped out of respect for her achievement.

Now it was being ignored.

“I worked hard for that,” Nunn said. “It really hurt me.”

Trying To ‘Right A Wrong’

Her disappointment resonated with neighbors.

A lifelong Commerce resident, Nunn discussed the subject every now and then during idle talk related to the city’s only high school and its revered Tiger athletics programs.

Talk turned to action on the women’s behalf about six months ago. That’s when Lewis Sanders contacted Greg Perry, a lawyer with a strong passion for local history. The Commerce men discussed the overlooked chapter.

Could something be done? Sanders challenged.

He picked the right candidate in Perry. The CHS alumnus recently petitioned the board of education to formally recognize his high school debate team, which won three state championships and competed nationally. The panel created a banner to honor the 1964-1966 teams and authorized its placement in the new high school’s media center.

Perry, who watched both women play ball as a fellow Commerce High student, adopted the new project and started researching their achievements.

“I set out on a mission to try to right a wrong,” Perry said.

He started by tracking down the older of the two athletes, the former Linda Lang who today goes by her married name Linda Exley. He found her in Stone Mountain, where she was preparing to move back to Commerce.

Next Perry spoke with Nunn, who heartily complied. She furnished newspaper clippings that detailed the both women’s achievements.

Perry had one special request.

Would they mind giving up the jerseys?

“In those days instead of framing the jerseys and giving them to the school they’d give them to the individual,” Perry explained. “As far as I know those are the only two jerseys that have ever been retired at CHS.”

‘Just Happy’ To Play

Linda Exley learned how to play basketball in the backyard of her Commerce home, where her dad and former school superintendent W.R. Lang put up a goal.

“I was a tomboy, you could say,” Exley explained. “The boys used to come over and shoot goals, so I would shoot with them.”

At the time, girls didn’t attempt jump shots or three-pointers. They mainly drove toward the post for layups or performed set shots. Nevertheless, Exley developed her own kind of jump shot, which she performed with her two hands cupping the ball overhead.

Execution meant everything in the girls’ six-on-six game, which pitted three shooting forwards against three defending guards on either side of the centerline. The position players did not cross from one side to the next. Strategy revolved around the half-court game, which meant forwards mainly relied on their aim.

“We had to be accurate in our shooting,” Exley said.

Construction of what is today known as the “old” high school gymnasium advanced the girls’ level of play about the time Exley entered high school in 1956. Until then, practices took place in an outdoor court and games happened in Maysville, she said.

“We were just tickled pink that we had a gym. Basketball is my love. That was the only thing available to girls. There were no other women’s sports,” Exley said. “It was just a very fun and exciting thing to do. You wanted to win. There was no doubt about that.”

Newspaper clippings, photographs and yearbook pages relate the Commerce team’s court performances as well as the accomplishments of its star players. A story dated March 6, 1963, praised Nunn, for instance, as a 5-foot-8-inch tall powerhouse who averaged 22 points and 12 rebounds a game.

Her team won its region twice and finished as runners-up twice during her four years. Among Nunn’s most impressive performances, her 32-points a game average during the 1963 region tournament, the story said.

Exley also garnered attention in local news, with one of her last games including a 26-point effort against Carnesville, “one of her best games since her leg injury,” according to one report. That year’s Echo annual showed Exley receiving her jersey from Davis as a trophy. The caption read: “This signifies that no girl will ever have Number 33 in Commerce. Linda, scoring 2020 points and averaging 30 points a game, deserves the privilege of keeping her jersey for she never missed a game nor a practice.”

Nunn, who also was written up for her jersey being retired, played in all 98 games during her career and earned the W.L. New Trophy for basketball excellence. She also was offered a rare chance to play at one of the few area colleges offering women’s basketball. But the athlete declined.

“I wish I had gone on,” Nunn said. “There is so much more now for the girls and women out there that we didn’t have when we were coming along.”

Both women attended a social event at the old gym where they once played before wrecking crews demolished the building in 2009 to make way for the new facilities.

“It brought back a lot of memories,” Exley said. “It was very simplistic and plain. There was a bench in the middle of the room, nothing compared to what locker rooms are like now, I suppose.”

She recalls sitting on that bench following her last game. Her coach would present the four-year team captain with her jersey in a few short weeks. Exley would stow the keepsake in a cedar chest for 51 years. Her memories lived on, too.

“When we played the last game my senior year that was it. It was very sad, one of the saddest days of my life. I can remember sitting in that locker room crying, thinking this is it. If we had the opportunity, we might have been the Pat Summits of the University of Georgia,” Exley said. “I think it is wonderful that girls have the opportunity they have now… That was the way it was for us. We were just happy to be able to play. We thought we were something.”

‘We Ought To Be Proud’

Perry arrived to the board of education’s November work session with a full presentation. He delivered copies of the old news and yearbook clippings. He showed the board the jerseys given to him by Exley and Nunn. Then he explained the artistic renditions, designed by his wife Rebecca. They pictured how the uniforms would be framed and the women’s court accomplishments commemorated — inside the new gym.

“I am sure if they had girls’ basketball in college then, they would’ve received scholarships. I felt like we need to recognize them in some way,” Perry told them.

The board agreed, though declined to pass a formal resolution, agreeing it had already been done. Superintendent James “Mac” McCoy told Perry to proceed with framing the jerseys and small plaques outlining the women’s basketball feats at Commerce High. Perry agreed to cover the costs through private donations.

It’s unclear where the markers will be placed in the gym. What is certain, however, is that girls who play basketball at Commerce will no longer wear numbers 25 or 33, McCoy added.

“We ought to be proud of this,” Perry said. “We need to display it, particularly since no one knows about it… I don’t know that we’ll ever retire another jersey but these two have already been done. We are now doing what should’ve been done then.”

Perry said he hopes a ceremony of some kind will be held in the women’s honor when they post the jerseys. Both Lang and Exley said they would attend.

“We talked about this over the years. It was all a long time ago. But I’m glad (they) are doing something about it,” Nunn said.

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