MOULTRIE — Today, a player who averaged more than 20 points a game and was her team’s co-captain three years in a row would be a highly prized basketball recruit by many college programs.

But when Annie Joyce Blunt graduated from William Bryant High in 1964, there were not many opportunites for high school girls basketball stars.

But college awaited the Class of 1964 valedictorian.

Annie Joyce went to Paine College in Augusta, which did not have a women’s program. She participated in intramural basketball, but concentrated on academics and thrived.

She went on to a long career in education, earning number of awards before retiring last year.

And even today, 44 years from when last played for the Lady Rams, she appreciates what she learned from athletics.

“Discipline,” she said this week from her home in Albany. “I still feel it’s extremely important.”

Annie Joyce Blunt Adams will join three of her former coaches when she is inducted into the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame at the annual banquet set for Oct. 2 at the high school cafeteria.

She began playing basketball in the seventh grade and eighth grade on the school’s junior varsity and by the the time she reached the ninth grade in 1960, she was playing on the varsity team.

Among her coaches were Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame members Mattie Taylor, Ralph Taylor and “Dad” Small.

She was the team’s captain in 1961-1962, 1962-1963 and 1963-1964.

A photograph from her yearbook shows the girls basketball team arrayed on the gymnasium floor with Coach Ralph Taylor behind them.

She and Margaret McCoy were the co-captains. Among the other top players on the team were Sarah Moss and Shirley Holton.

On the same page is a photo of the boys basketball team, featuring Coach Dad Small and future Hall of Famer Tunk Richardson.

The girls played half-court then and Adams was an outstanding forward.

“Five-foot-9 seemed very tall then,” she said. “It doesn’t seem very tall now.

“And you have to be in better shape to play now. There is much more running involved.”

Despite her outstanding career, she was not destined to play at the next level.

“I never even thought about it,” she said. “There just weren’t too many scholarships then.”

She was a cheerleader and ran track, but she also was an excellent math student and her teachers made sure she received a college education.

She attended Paine College through 1967 and later taught at Moultrie Junior High in 1973.

Her husband, Sam Adams, was in the military and while he was stationed at Fort Devens In Massachusetts, she earned a degree at Fitchburg State College.

She also has done post-graduate studies at Valdosta State, Tufts and the University of Virginia and earned a master’s degree in mathematics from Albany State in 1985.

She received her education specialist degree in administration and and supervision from Valdosta State in 1995.

While in Massacuusetts, she taught math at Ayer Junior High School and coached the school’s ninth-grade girls basketball team.

She returned to Moultrie and taught math at Moultrie Junior High School in 1979 before moving west with her husband and teaching at Fort Carson High School in Fort Carson, Colo., in 1981.

In 1982, Adams returned to Southwest Georgia where she was a math teacher, lead teacher, coach and department chair at Southside and Dougherty High. She also was an instructional leader in mathematics in Worth County in 2001.

Adams served six years on thes Georgia Professioanl Standards Commission, appointed by Govs. Zell Miller and Roy Barnes.

She also founded the Miss Afro Pageant in 1979 at Friendship Baptist Church in Moultrie and has been a soloist in the choirs at William Bryant High, Paine College, Fort Devens, Fort Carson Chapel and in the Moultrie and Dougherty community choirs.

She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and is treasurer of Deb Funds of Utilis Matronae Club and was its Woman of the Year in 2004. She serves as director of Christian Education at Hines Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

She and her husband, who is retired from the military, have been married 41 years and have four daughters and three grandchildren.