A nationally known women’s basketball team was based in a small Craighead County town. Formed in 1936 in Missouri, the All American Red Heads moved to Caraway in northeast Arkansas in 1955. Orwell “Red” Moore was the team owner and coach and his wife Lorene “Butch” Moore played with the Red Heads for twelve years, playing in two thousand games and scoring more than thirty five thousand points.
The Red Heads were known for back-hand passing, behind-the-back shooting and other trick shots while playing men’s teams under men’s rules, winning seventy percent of their games. They played in every U.S. state and in Canada, Mexico and the Philippines and appeared on television on The Ed Sullivan Show and What’s My Line. Governor Orval Faubus declared them “Ambassadors of Goodwill for Arkansas.”
They stopped playing in 1986 but gathered for a reunion game ten years later, playing the Walmart All Stars. The Red Heads became the first women’s team inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012.
To learn more, visit encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
Read the Encyclopedia entry at All American Red Heads - Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
