Jacqueline Burton laughs at the idea of being called a pioneer of man-to-man defense in girls basketball.
“I’m not a pioneer in man-to-man defense,” she said with a chuckle, “I was just stupid enough to use it, I guess.”
The 1964 Crawfordsville High School graduate believes, though, that her application of the defense to girls basketball as coach at Columbus East High School in the late 1970s and early 80s, is one of the main reasons she will be inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame during a banquet April 26 in Indianapolis.
“In 1980 we were the state runner-up, lost in overtime to Southport,” Burton said. “Probably one of the reasons that I’m being inducted is we played man-to-man defense at that time, and we were one of the few teams that did.”
Burton, who was a four-year member of the Girls Athletic Association serving stints as vice president and president at Crawfordsville, said in the early years of girls basketball, zone defense was most common.
“It was easier,” Burton said of the zone. “Girls had so much to learn, it was just easier to keep it simple. You get kids with very little playing experience. It was just part of the growth for the sport.”
Burton’s 1980 Columbus East team used man-to-man defense — as well as 1980 Miss Basketball Maria Stack — on its way to the finals.
“We were there for basically two reasons,” Burton said. “One was that (Stack) was with us … and the other was we were able to keep our opponents at least 20 points below their season average.
“Nobody knew what to do, they just weren’t used to playing against that kind of defense.”
Burton, who in those days was known as Jacqueline Graham, moved to Crawfordsville when she was in third grade and her family remained until the year after she graduated from high school.
Of her time in Crawfordsville, Burton said she remembers her brother playing for Athenians’ coach Dick Baumgartner. Since Crawfordsville didn’t have a girls basketball program at the time, she didn’t remember much about her own career there.
“As far as me, there just really isn’t anything,” she said. “I think the only thing I remembers besides just going on a Tuesday night and playing was the high school girls played the junior high girls one time, and that was it.”
Burton, who currently resides just outside Knoxville, Tenn., attended Ball State after high school, and while the Cardinals were still several years away from the formation of an NCAA women’s program, she played basketball and volleyball while in Muncie.
Burton said she learned basketball, and her love of the game, on a paved surface with a backboard and hoop at her parents’ home in Columbus.
“As soon as I was able to get the ball to the basket,” Burton said, “I was out there everyday. It wasn’t until college where I actually got to play for a team.”
Upon graduating from Ball State, Burton went to Knox to begin her teaching career. She said she began work on a rudimentary basketball program there, but left before it came to fruition.
In 1970 she began a girls basketball program at Columbus High School, and two years later she went across town to Columbus East. She led the team to two sectionals, two regionals, one semi-state and one state runner-up finish.
These days Burton no longer coaches, but she’s still a fan of girls basketball. Living just outside Knoxville, she has season tickets for the University of Tennessee Lady Volunteers women’s basketball team. The Lady Vols’ coach, a hall-of-famer in her own right by the name of Pat Summitt, was one of the presenters at a clinic Burton attended years before her Olympians’ run to the state finals.
It was another presenter, though, that offered Burton a tool she’d use to make her indelible mark on girls basketball.
“There was a gal there from Yorktown,” Burton said, “who was actually teaching man-to-man defense.”
While Burton doesn’t call herself a pioneer of man defense, she considers herself among the pioneers of girls high school basketball in Indiana.
“I guess when you start programs and work hard to get extra games and practice times and things like that,” Burton said, “that you have to consider yourself to be a part of that group.”
Apparently the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame agrees.
