To this day, nearly 40 years later, Sue Smith insists her missed free throw wasn’t intentional.

She was Sue Daily then and a member of the 1969 Braggs High School girls basketball team that was playing Hardesty for the Class C state championship.

Smith missed a free throw late in the game, got the rebound and sank a basket and the Lady Wildcats edged Hardesty by the decisive two points for the 44-42 victory.

“It hit the front of the rim,” Smith said about the missed free throw attempt. “Everybody thought I did it on purpose because it came right back to me, but I did not. Everyone thought I was so smart, but I got the two points instead of one.”

Scoring points wasn’t a problem for Smith, who now owns Sue’s Recycling with her husband in Vian. She was a 5-foot-8 guard who scored 99 points in the three tournament games as Braggs beat Piedmont 51-46 in the first game and topped No. 1-ranked Ames 53-52 in the semifinals.

This was during the era of 6-on-6 and the game was played from half-court, not the 5-on-5 full-court game it is today.

The years have clouded the memory of that moment late in the finale, but Smith’s play remains vivid to the other girls on the team.

“She was the best to me, a go-getter,” Pam Chandler said. “Sue could score from any position. She liked to shoot the ball with her eyes shut. She could go to the basket and get in there to get the rebounds. Sue was an awesome player in my book.

“She was my idol. She never got tired. If she had a shot, she would make it nine times out of 10.”

Chandler, who was Pam Jaynes when she was in school, gets reminded of that year and that team every time she is at work. As a custodian at Braggs, she walks by the school’s trophy case and sees the championship trophy.

“I had two kids go to school here and they said, ‘Mama, your team was the best.’”

Someone had to coach Braggs to be the best and that was Henry Bias, in his first year in 1969. Now 67 years old and retired for five years from Coweta, Bias hasn’t forgotten the team the Phoenix called the Wildkittens in stories from that season.

“The first thing that comes to my mind is they were good girls and true champions. They played the game hard,” he said. “They were very dedicated and loyal to the game of basketball. It was a fun group to be around and I couldn’t ask for a better group of young ladies to work with.”

Bias is also quick to point out this was also during the time when the playoffs were single-elimination.

“Every time we took the floor, we had a good feeling we were going to win the game,” he said.