Barb Yozell Remembers the Floradora Girls and Their Coach

Barb Yozell played field hockey, basketball and softball at SHS. She graduated in 1960.

Here is a copy of the speech she wrote about Swampscott's Floradora girls and read at the Swampscott Athletic Hall of Fame dinner in recognition of them.

 From the late 1920s to the late 1960s, Swampscott High School’s women athletes were known as the FLORADORA GIRLS. 

This nickname was in honor of the school’s highly respected and very demanding coach, Flora Boynton McLearn. 

Flora WAS the women’s Physical Education Department. Along with gym class routines as teacher, she was the coach of everything! 

In my time, she fought tooth and nail with the men, including Stan Bondelevitch and Coach Lynch, for equal practice time in the gym for her girl’s teams.  Oh, to have been a ‘fly on the wall’ at those meetings!

Mrs. McLearn was a coach totally dedicated to teaching the important basic skills and drills and scrimmages needed to make her women’s teams the very best!! 

LOSE was not in her vocabulary!  In field hockey it was PLAY IT! PLAY IT! PLAY IT!  “run until your lungs hurt” until the ball either went over the sideline or into the goal. 

In basketball, she had a theory—take the tallest girl, plant her under the basket, have the rest of the team feed her the ball and she would pop in those ‘bunny shots’  (lay-ups today ) and demolish the competition.

This was a time when the rules were half court, two dribbles and pass the ball … 3 on 3 and then give it to the other team.

Back in the day, as they say, women’s sports weren’t affiliated with a conference as they are today. 

It was a pretty rag-tag schedule.  Some seasons there were seven games, some nine or ten.

Flora would call a team on the South Shore, make a call to Principal Jim Dunn, have us dismissed early, just so we could have some competition.

She led us into the college ranks when, one season, we even played Jackson College at Tufts University AND we beat them ! How cool was that for a bunch of high school girls.

 The records from 1945-to the late 1960’s, while unofficial, include:

     Field Hockey 121-12-16

     Basketball   136-14

     There was a decade, from 1951-1961, when the girls b-ball team went 75-2 !

Belichick can’t come close to that!!

In the end, this story is not about Flora, who is enshrined in this Hall.  Instead, it’s about ALL of the women, The Floradora Girls, who soared to unbelievable win-loss records in field hockey, basketball, softball, and reaped the character-building and fitness derived from athletic competition.

And, of course, there were the gorgeous drill teams who so elegantly marched down Humphrey Street guiding the band to Blocksidge Field for the football games and pleased the crowd with precision half time performances.

Tonight is a tremendous and well deserved honor for these hundreds of gals who practiced long hours with commitment and dedication, who developed skills and were competing long before Title 9 and organized leagues, conferences, all star teams, and college scholarships for women.

On behalf of all the women who competed we offer our gratitude and thank you so very much for this honor and recognition.

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