“I’m not trying to sound overconfident,” Miriam Taylor Johnson said. “But every time I took a shot I just pictured it going in.”
Johnson is remembered as an all time great Clarendon County women’s basketball player, and now she is a Clarendon County Hall of Famer.
The 1963 Manning High graduate talked with coaches after playing guard her sophomore year, about moving to forward. It proved to be a good decision.
“I loved playing guard, and we had a good little group of girls playing, but we’d get the ball down the court and we couldn’t score,” Johnson said. “I told the coaches, ‘I think I can make some baskets at forward.”’
As a junior, Johnson scored 490 points in 18 games, and managed to score 51 points in a 28 minute game.
“Every time I touched the ball it would go in,” she said. “It was crazy.”
Johnson, a humble, team player, started feeling bad about taking so many shots.
“I told my teammates to quit passing me the ball,” she said. “I felt like a ball hog.”
Even during the prime of her basketball carrier, she played for the love of the game, not statistics.
“I never thought about scoring points,” she said. “I just loved playing ball, and whatever happened, happened.”
Johnson’s legendary career was proven to be backed by hard work during the Monarchs off days.
“She’s there waiting for me to open the gym in the morning,” Coach Billy Tiller told The State newspaper in 1962. “I had to throw her out (of the gym) in the afternoon so I could close up and go home.”
As a senior Johnson managed 401 points in 15 games, and was named to the all conference and all tournament teams her junior and senior seasons.
“It was a good run, and we had a lot fun at school,” she said. “When we went to Columbia (for the State Championship Tournament) the whole school got behind us.”
After Johnson’s senior season she was offered to play basketball at the college level, but declined.
“At the time schools didn’t offer women athletic scholarships and my mom said, ‘no way,’” she said. “We didn’t have any money. They were going to pay my way, but we were not going to accept any kind of contribution from anyone in that way.”
This didn’t keep Johnson off the hardwood. After marrying, and her husband joining the military, she played on the Ramstein Air Force Base basketball and softball teams in Germany. There her basketball team won three-straight European Championships.
“It was a brilliant experience,” she said. “I really loved playing with some great athletes, but I didn’t have the young legs to contribute as much as I did in high school.”
Johnson played shortstop, third base and some center field while playing softball for the Air Force Base.
“I could hit homeruns,” she said. “Every time I came to bat I thought I was going to get a hit. To me it was just natural.”
