By WALLACE C. HITCHCOCK
West Carolina Bureau

MONETTA – A basketball game at the Ridge Spring – Monetta High School here Thursday night ended with a fist fight and two warrants issued for assault and battery with intent to do bodily harm.

The warrants, signed against two Elgin women, came in the final minutes of a conference 3-A game between St. Angela of Aiken and Blaney of Elgin.

Mrs. M. L. Bonnette, principal of the high school here, said the fracas was “a very minor fight and nobody was injured.” But one referee sports a sizeable bruise on his side.

The names of the women charged in the warrant are not yet available. They were described as adults.

According to Bob Peele, athletic director at the school here, two opposing players got into a hassle which involves an official. Finally, one Blaney player was ejected from the game.

The conference game took on a carnival atmosphere when official Craig Hammond of Columbia went to confer with other officials at the scorer’s table.

Peele said a woman jumped from the stands and grabbed Hammond’s hair with both hands and began to tug. Then another woman joined in and began pounding Hammond on the back.

To make matters worse, he said, a Blaney player hit Hammond in the back.

Peele said official Jack Shaw, also of Columbia, tried to pull the women off his colleague, but some men grabbed Shaw. Before the “very minor fight” had ended, the hair pulling woman had sunk her teeth into Hammond’s side.

Meanwhile Peele said, an Aiken County Deputy Sheriff at the scene radioed for another deputy to help stop the battle, but the extra deputy was not needed.

The situation finally cooled, Peele said, and a man who had been sitting in the stands “instigating the whole thing” was removed from the gym. Officials called the game to a halt, even though two minutes remained to be played, and declared St. Angela the winner, 73-49.

Hammond signed the warrants which are being held by the Aiken County Sheriff’s Department, poding receipt of the women’s names from Elgin school officials. They were issued by Magistrate H. B. Fulmer of Ridge Spring.

“A couple of people just lost their tempers, Peele said Friday. “That’s one of the pitfalls of high school athletics. The parents get a little out of hand.”

Peele said the players got along just fine after the game was called. They used the same dressing room to change clothes and there were no problems, he added.

Peele said he has some words for official Hammond after the fracas has cooled.

“Ole Buddy,” he said he would tell the Columbia official, “I bet you wish you had a crew cut like me.”