VALDOSTA — “I was Daddy’s tomboy, I guess,” laughs Henrietta “Hank” Barnes, referring to her sports career in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

She played girls basketball throughout high school and beyond playing on a team that competed against college teams in the Georgia mountains.

Barnes played in what is considered one of the first women’s softball leagues in North Georgia, winning the 1939 championship.

Throughout most of her adulthood, she played tennis and she competed at golf, playing the game until her late husband, Marty, became ill several years ago.

Sports shaped Henrietta “Hank” Barnes’ life at a time when women’s sports were considered a novelty. Sports gave a young girl named Henrietta the nickname she still uses at the age of 87.

“Hank goes back to softball,” she says.

League organizers offered $25 to the first young woman to hit a homerun. “This was 1939 and $25 was a lot of money especially being in high school,” Barnes says.

At the time, Hank Greenberg was a superstar baseball player for the Detroit Tigers. Known for his home runs, Greenberg was the original “Hammerin’ Hank.”

In one game, Henrietta swatted the ball with great force. Referring to the young woman’s trip around the bases, the announcer yelled, “Watch Hank Greenberg go!”

Had her name been something other than Henrietta, the nickname may have never stuck. But she came away from that game as “Hank” forever more, and $25 richer.

Then, she was Henrietta “Hank” Foster, one of five daughters of Benjamin Foster and Mamie Louise Bryant Foster. Hank was the fourth daughter, coming after sisters Louise, Rachel and Sara, and before the youngest Elfreeda.

None of the other Foster sisters ever showed much interest in sports, but the girl who would become Hank did.

Benjamin Foster was an athletic man. On the family’s 10 acres of land, he mowed out a baseball diamond, put up a basketball hoop, and developed a red-clay tennis court. Benjamin Foster loved competition, especially on the tennis courts. He won a tennis tournament at the age of 63.

He also loved his daughters. Some may think that such an athletically competitive man would have longed for sons. Not Benjamin Foster.