By Kim J. Harmon

T

he modern era of girls’ basketball did not start until about 1970 and by then it had already been more than 20 years – back when the school was called Hawley – since Newtown High School had had a successful program and, better yet, more than 20 years since it had boasted a truly great female basketball player.

But in the 1980s that all changed. A new generation of female athletes had arrived in Newtown and Laura Oberstadt – outstanding soccer player, the first girls’ basketball player to score better than 300 points in a single season, All-State softball player – was among them.

The numbers don’t lie – especially in basketball – but the numbers were only part of the reason why she was selected to join Lindell Hertberg, Emmy Farrell and Linda Dirga in the Newtown Sports Hall of Fame in the year 2000.

Laura was, perhaps, Newtown’s first true three-sport star who excelled at all three sports – from soccer in the fall to basketball in the winter and right on into softball in the spring. And the way people will talk about her – even 12 years after she graduated – it is with a certain bit of awe.

It was clear, she was one of the best.

Basketball Superstar

Lindell Hertberg (also an inductee in the 2000 Newtown Sports Hall of Fame) remembers Laura joining his Parks and Recreation basketball team as a fifth-grader and remembers seeing her ability right away.

“From fifth-grade on, she was terrific . . . a lovely girl,” he said. “By the time she was in eighth grade, she was one of the best players in a very strong league. If she was not the best female athlete in Newtown, she was one of the best.”

She was also one of the first players who got fans interested in the career scoring chart at Newtown High School.

After the rules of the game changed to become what they are now, Liza Fairfield (Class of 1970) was at the top of the list with 435 points (while Joan Crick, who graduated in 1950, was second with 406 points.

Along came Tracy Teichert in 1980, who re-set the scoring mark at 528. Jacquie Smith followed in 1983 to score her 632nd point and give at least a niggling interest in the career scoring records at Newtown High.

Laura came by five years later, though, and began a total reshaping of the career scoring chart. With 246 points as a junior and 301 as a senior (the first player to ever score more than 300 points in a single season), Laura became Newtown High School’s first 700 point scorer – finishing with 745.

Unfortunately, her time atop the chart lasted all of one season. The following year, her former teammates – Kasey Keating and Jennifer Wyslick – both surpassed her on the chart. Keating scored a school-record 500 points as a senior to finish at 913 and Wyslick added 301 of her own to finish at 751.

Since then, Lynn Lattanzio (1992), Katie Lyddy (1995) and Liz Glaser (1997) have all passed Laura on the chart.

But she was the first.

And remains sixth, 12 years later.

As good as she was in basketball, coach Hertberg said, “Basketball wasn’t even her best sport. Softball was her strongest sport. She was the player (at Newtown High) and went on to become a very good college catcher.”

In four outstanding seasons at Newtown High, from 1984 through 1988, Laura helped lead the Indians (as they were known then) to a combined record of 62-19 with two Western Connecticut Conference championships and two trips into the CIAC Class L semi-finals.

She was also right there as the Newtown High girls’ soccer team became the dominant force in the old Western Connecticut Conference with three league championships. She scored 14 goals as a senior and finished her career with 29, good – at least for one year – for second place on the career chart.

She was a superstar in all three sports and that was because she had a passion for all three.

“Each season,” she said, “the sport I was playing was my favorite. Softball was probably my strongest sport – I played softball in the summer – but I regret not playing basketball in college.”

At Eastern Connecticut State University, Laura played both soccer and softball. As a freshman catcher who spent most of her time in the cheering section on the bench, Eastern Connecticut won the national championship and, as a sophomore, finished second.

“It is a very different sport (in college),” she said. “Very fast. Incredible.”

A psychology major in college, Laura (Oberstadt) Boardman is now a systems analyst at Output Technologies in South Windsor. Now 30, she is married and living in Columbia with her husband, Thomas, a salesman for Anderson Windows in Rocky Hill.

She still manages to exercise her athletic gifts, too. Besides playing slo-pitch softball for the company team, she also plays volleyball in the winter (her fourth sport), which she so ably demonstrated her skill at a couple times during past Newtown Youth Services volleyball tournaments.

Her memories are not so much of the games – not the buzzer shot by Marty Huntington that lifted the Indians over Masuk, 56-55, for the first time ever or the off-balance shot with 5:15 left in a 63-21 win over Central Catholic that made her the school’s all-time leading scorer – but of coaches like Bob Sveda and Owen Gallagher and Lin Hertberg

And, now, she is enshrined alongside them in the Newtown Sports Hall of Fame.