MOULTRIE — One of the benefits of being on the Norman Park High girls basketball teams in the 1962-1963 and 1963-1964 seasons was that after home games, the players went back to Wanda Purvis’s house, where her mother had a big pot of vegetable soup waiting.

Those teams, coached by Herbert Houston, were excellent ones, so the Trojanettes were more often than not able to celebrate victories over Mrs. Purvis’s soup.

And one of the reasons those Norman Park teams were successful was the play of Wanda herself, a 5-foot-8 pivot forward who averaged 30 points a game.

Next week, Wanda Purvis Ross will join her former Trojanette teammate Carolyn Grantham Booth and contemporaries Mary Jo Fincher, Gwyned Bius and Beth McCoy Redding in the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame.

The 14-member 2007 Hall of Fame class, which will include Ross, Bius and Redding, will be inducted at the annual banquet, to be held on Thursday, Oct. 25, at the Colquitt County High cafeteria.

Ross scored 2,460 points during her four-year career at Norman Park, including 927 during her senior season.

Julian Grantham had not yet returned to Norman Park to coach when Ross was the top player for the Trojanettes, but he saw her play.

And was impressed.

“She was one of the first females I ever saw who could shot a jump shot,” Grantham said. “I would have enjoyed the opportunity of coaching her.”

Booth, who was two years behind Ross at Norman Park, remembers her well.

“Wanda was a terrific basketball player,” she said. “She is the one I learned the hook shot from.

“The coaches at a young age had me at the gym watching her practice.”

Ross was attending Ellenton School in the fifth grade when Bud Willis got her interested in basketball as part of the county recreation program.

At Norman Park, she did not start as a ninth-grader, but there was no keeping her out of the lineup the next three seasons.

She still has an affection for Houston, who is expected to travel from his home in Rabun Gap to attend the Hall of Fame banquet next week.

“He was a great coach and is a great person,” Ross said. “He worked you hard. He made you earn what you got.”

The Trojanettes twice went to the Class C state tournament while she played.

The 1963-1964 team was an excellent one. She was the only senior and her teammates included Mary Donald, Carolyn Grantham, Judy Whisnant, Lynn Tanner and Susan Middlebrooks.

In February of that season, the Trojanettes defeated Moultrie High 63-50, with Ross scoring 39 points.

Her best game was a 52-point effort against Lake City.

Two of Norman Park’s losses that season were to the Mary Jo Fincher-led Doerun Does.

As a senior, she scored 45 points in a 73-71 overtime loss to Milner and was named All-State for her effort.

One of her memories of playing high school basketball came one year after she suffered a black eye in a game against Omega.

As the Norman Park captain, she went to midcourt before the start of the next game at Baker County. When she got there, the official saw her shiner and asked her, taking off on a television commercial that was popular at the time, “Oh, you’d rather fight than switch?”

Surprisingly, she got another black eye that night as well.

Ross says she attributes much of her success to the support of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Woodrow Purvis.

“I don’t think I would have played as well as I did if I hadn’t had my daddy in the crowd,” she said. “I could always hear him above everyone else.”

After her final season at Norman Park, she was approached by representatives of the traveling Atlanta Tomboys.

“Back then, you didn’t get scholarships,” she said. “The Tomboys talked to my parents, but, basically, they played like men. It was for show. It just wasn’t something I wanted to do.”

She played recreation basketball in Moultrie for a number of years and later moved to Atlanta area, where she worked for the Georgia State Patrol Capitol Police as an administrative coordinator.

Married to Paul Z. Ross, she lives in Jackson is now retired after working for the State of Georgia since 1988.

Ross and her husband make frequent trips to Colquitt County where her daughter Shana Goodno is a registered nurse. Her husband Richard owns and operates Goodno Electrical Service.

Ross has two grandchildren, Hannah and Zachary Goodno.

One of her favorite things to do when returning to Colquitt County is playing basketball with her grandson, a fine youth baseball player.

“He thinks he can whip his Nana in basketball,” she said.

“Sometimes he can and sometimes he can’t.”