The Cumberland Heat
In 1996 the United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA) authorized women’s fast-pitch softball. It was immediately established in Maryland, and the Cumberland Heat was founded.
The Central High School girls basketball team of Lonaconing holds the Allegany County basketball record for consecutive wins having won 65 games in a row. This was over the course of three seasons; 1922, 1923, and 1924.
Central’s winning streak was snapped by Beall High School in 1924 when they were defeated by a score of 36 to 35 in a Western Maryland Interscholastic League (WMIL) championship playoff game. The WMIL was, at one time, the oldest continuous high school athletic league in the country.
Betty Hodges, Jean Arendes Bibby, and Evelyn Bowie
The Cumberland Country Club (CCC) was established in 1919. The first woman to win the Women's Club Championship was Bess Shearer in 1922. For the next five decades, with the exception of 1943-1947 when no tournaments were held, the above three women were felt to have dominated the golfing scene at the Cumberland Country Club, as well as throughout the area. As noted below, and in addition to golf, they also made their presence known in skiing and tennis.
Jean Bibby was known as “Miss Golf” in Cumberland and is considered the greatest woman golfer in Allegany County history. Between the years 1925 and 1976 Jean Bibby won a total of twenty Cumberland Country Club golf championships, in 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1931, 1932, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1957, 1960, 1968, 1971, 1975, and 1976.
The 2004 Beall High School State Champions in Women’s Softballl
Front row: Emily Livingston, Sara Harris, Tasha Wilhelm, Kacey Kahl, Theresa Murray, Melissa Miller
Back row: Katy Holcomb, Kate Rephann, Whitney Wilson, Corrie Felker, Kaiti Robinson, Amy Williams.
Martha Mauzy served as the head coach of the 2004 Beall High School State Championship team, as well as the 2012 Mountain Ridge High School State Championship team.
On May 29, 2010, the Allegany High School Girls Softball Team won the Maryland Class 1A State Championship. Allegany High School also won the State Championship in 1999, 2022 and again in 2024. The game was played at the University of Maryland's Robert E. Taylor Stadium in College Park, Maryland.
The Allegany High School Girls Softball Team won the Maryland Class 1A State Championship in 1999. Allegany High School would again win the State Championship in 2010, 2022 and again in 2024.
Members of the 1999 team were, front row, Kim Twigg, Lauren Stillwagon, Donnie Helman, Erin Rhodes, and Staci Walton. In the back row were Heather Laffey, Abbey Niland, Kendra Bonella, Brooke Payton, Manda Widmyer, Andria Cook, Cassie Murray, and Corinthia Kendall.
Allegany (1997, 1998) is the high school which has won the State Girls Cross Country Championship two times.
From: Maryland Public Secondary School Athletic Association (MPSSAA) website.
The photograph is of the 1998 Allegany High School cross county team.
Front row: Jennifer Linn, Kate Gall, Susan Kelly, Rebecca Mertz
Back row: Kandi Wertz, Tara Kelly, Amber Grove, Christy Dowdell, Nory Sams and Erin Davis
Girls representing the City of Cumberland who have captured the National Marbles Championship, held each year in Wildwood, New Jersey for youths between the ages 8-14, include Patricia Kimmell in 1983, Amy Thompson in 1985, Lori Dickel (from Ridgeley, West Virginia) in 1987, Dawn Lancaster in 1991 and Katelynn Gaumer in 2024.
Amy Thompson, a 1991 Fort Hill High School graduate, later married. As Amy Yarbrough in 2002 and at the age of 29 she won the United States Marbles Championship, Women's Division.
OAKLAND — The original nursing team at Garrett County Memorial Hospital, now retired nurses, has joined forces to help the hospital develop a History Wall to be located on the first floor.
(Seated from left to right) Toni Eshleman, Elizabeth Teagarden, Phyllis Maffett, Mildred Dunbar, (and standing left to right) Martha Sanders, Norma Gnegy and Norma Hesen helped establish the precedent of quality care when they joined the hospital staff in the early 1950s. Most of them began working there right after graduating from nursing school.