Janice (Braley) Maynard
Graduating class: 1945
Inducted into Hall of Fame: 2024
Hall of Fame Category: Athlete
Janice (Braley) Maynard received plaudits for four years of athletic service with the field hockey and basketball teams, but she earned newspaper headlines for her contributions to the sport of golf in the early 1940s. Janice was a goalie for Fairhaven’s field hockey team from 1942 through the 1945 during the fall seasons and followed up those performances with her contributions as a four-year forward with the school’s intramural basketball teams in the winter.
The newspaper headlines came in May of 1941 when Janice was a 12-year-old, eighth-grader who, in effect, was the team “caddy” for standout golfer Doug Stevens. She also was the first girl to play on the all-boys golf team. Braley’s older brother “Giff” was a member of Fairhaven’s 1941 golf team and remembered the first time his sister shot her way into the headlines. “In those days Fairhaven High School had a golf team and Jim Parkinson was the coach,” he recalled. “Mr. Parkinson belonged to the Reservation Golf Club in Mattapoisett and the team was allowed to use the course for home matches.” Like her brother had, Janice learned the game of golf from their family’s club membership. “(We) learned the game by caddying and hacking around, playing behind our parents,” Giff said. Janice had a natural swing and, according to her brother, “could out-drive and out-score me most of the time.”
Stevens was Fairhaven’s golf team captain and best golfer on that ‘41 team. Arguably, he was also the best performer on the school’s track team and since track (and baseball) were considered two major spring sports, Stevens’ commitment was to the oval if and when track and golf were scheduled on the same day. That’s what happened in late May of 1941 when Janice - then a 12-year-old eighth grader - was penciled in as a replacement for Stevens in a match against top-ranked New Bedford High School and ace Eddie Anderson at the Country Club of New Bedford. Janice didn’t win that day, but she played well enough to shoot her way into the next day’s newspaper’s headlines: “Miss Braley Golf Star; Blue Uses 12-Year-Old Girl Against NB High.”
The following day Janice was back in the Fairhaven lineup and won the Blue’s only hole on the 15th with a par three in a loss to Barnstable at Hyannisport on the Cape. In a sport dominated by the opposite sex, Janice Braley proved to be on a par with any high school boy on the golf course. Janice had a lifelong love of golf. She won a Women’s Club Championship at the Reservation Golf Club in the early 1960s.
Janice was more than an athlete though. She was a member of the school band, an Honor Roll student and Valedictorian of her senior class (1945). Following her graduation from high school, Janice earned her Bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College.
Upon graduation, Janice married Norman Maynard and they raised three daughters. When her daughters were mostly grown, Janice had a career in special education in Fall River, retiring at the age of 65in the early 90’s. Janice passed away on June 6, 2019 at the age of 91.