Bio

Barbara Ann (Patton) Ladner

Perkinston Agricultural High School (1956-1960) / Basketball, Tennis
Perkinston Junior College (1960-1962) / Basketball, Tennis
Saucier, Mississippi

The Saucier native, who is a lifetime member of the Gulf Coast Alumni Association, was a standout high-school athlete. While at Perkinston Agricultural High School, she routinely made the Gulf Coast Conference All-Star team, took home several MVP honors and led the PAHS team to a conference championship. During her senior year, she scored 433 points and averaged 24.8 points per contest.

“When I was playing, there was no college basketball for women at Perk,” Ladner says. “So I knew my last year in high school would be my last to play basketball. It turned out to be my best year. The best part about it was just playing with the girls. Our coach, Francis Gibson, was wonderful. She kept our team very close.”

Ladner also won the Gulf Coast Conference MVP trophy for that season. It was an honor which she says “was a very special award to me because it was my last year to play at Perk. Before the championship game I was sick, and my father didn’t want me to play. But my coach came to our house and talked him into letting me play, and we ended up winning the title.”

In addition to basketball, Ladner also played tennis and was involved in several campus organizations. “I wasn’t by any means a star in tennis,” she says. “I just loved to play.”

Ladner was voted Most Athletic and Most Versatile by her teammates at 1960. “At that time, the high school students and college students went to class together on the same campus. As a 14-year-old, I thought that was the neatest thing.”

Ladner’s ties to Gulf Coast have stayed firm since her graduation. She served a scholarship chair for the college’s Harrison County alumni chapter and also helped organize other alumni events. She’s also stayed competitive on and off the athletic field. In 2005, she won two medals in a 2005 Mississippi Gulf Coast Senior Games, taking a silver medal in basketball and a bronze in shuffleboard. “It’s great to see older people staying active in events like the Senior Games,” Ladner says. “Everyone is very nice and usually no one goes home empty-handed.”

Ladner also rides her bicycle four to eight miles a day. Off the field, she’s a member of the South Mississippi chapter of the Red Hat Society. In 2005, Ladner was crowned American Classic Woman during a pageant at the Imperial Palace Theater in Biloxi that is “dedicated to the women of the world, their inner strength, fortitude, sense of humor and resilient spirit.”