PROVO — The LDS All-Church basketball tournament was discontinued in 1971, but not because — as the T-shirt slogan goes — church ball is "the brawl that begins with a prayer."
Nevertheless, sportsmanship was an issue for the tournament, which brought teams from LDS wards around the country to Salt Lake City each year between 1922 and 1970 to determine bragging rights .
One Brigham Young University historian said the Deseret News, which sponsored a coaches' luncheon, annually ran stories spouting the propaganda that teams "weren't playing for the championship but for the sportsmanship trophy."
"We know that's not true," said Jessie L. Embry, assistant director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at BYU. "There wasn't always the best sportsmanship, and everyone did want to win."
Billed as "The World's Largest Basketball Tournament," the event drew teams from as far as California, Canada and Mexico during its Golden Age in the 1950s and '60s. Even World War II failed to stop the tournament, though it limited the number of teams that participated.
Embry, who never amounted to more than a wannabe hoop star herself — "I was really, really bad," she said with a laugh — is spearheading a research project on all aspects of LDS Church sports. She's focusing specifically on All-Church basketball and other All-Church competitions, which included softball, tennis and golf, as well as dance and speech festivals.
Embry has a penchant for amateur sports history that began with an article she co-authored on racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats. She and Utah State University historian Ron Shook are turning that project into a book.
Embry also published separate articles on the history of baseball in Cache Valley and Provo.
"My focus is sports and its impact on community," Embry said.
That made church sports a natural option.
"I started thinking about how big All-Church used to be," she said. "How much it was a part of the church and a part of the participants' lives."
Pete Witbeck played in the tournament with a Provo ward when he was a freshman at BYU in the early 1950s.
"It was a big deal," said Witbeck, who recently retired after a long career at BYU, where he served as an assistant basketball coach and assistant athletic director. "The media covered it heavily. It was really something just to get into it, and you got to meet people from everywhere."
Another former BYU basketball coach, the late Floyd Millet, was the tournament chairman for five years before he became the athletic director at BYU. His wife Vera said working with the tournament was one of Millet's favorite jobs.
Embry said church leaders abandoned the tournament because it threatened to become unwieldy after church membership exploded, especially in South America, during the 1960s. Although some expenses were recouped in ticket sales, the church paid for travel, accommodations and even some meals for the teams.
Embry hopes people who participated in the tournament or in church sports in general will share their stories through oral history interviews, manuscripts, autobiographies or by e-mail.
Anyone interested can contact Embry by mail at the Charles Redd Center, 5437 HBLL, BYU, Provo, UT 84602; by e-mail at jle3@email.byu.edu or by leaving a phone message at 801-422-7585.
E-mail: twalch@desnews.com