November 22, 2010
High School Years
12th Grade – Our Senior Year
Here it is Saturday morning, already 82 degrees outside on the 20th of November. I just sent out my Blog (23) and decided to try and write the final Blog in my High School memories. So far my mind is a blank but I am sure, as usual, if I start thinking of even one event I will begin to remember some things.
I remember we had “Senioritis” pretty bad. We wanted the year to go fast so we could graduate and go on with our lives. Most of us except two in our immediate group went on to college and they decided to go to California (I will tell you more about them later on in this Blog.)
I think I will focus on our basketball team. I have a photograph that I received from Elaine Cook on a CD of the classes in Sac City.
It showed all of the photos of each class way back as far as 1935, From there on back there were no pictures, only the list of students in each class way back to 1986 I think it was. Plus there were selected yearbook photos from various classes through the years.
The photo below was of our basketball team. I wasn’t one of the starters, but was the 6th man. I would normally get to be the first substitute when coach Long would make a substitute.
Coach Long was a graduate from Iowa State and was an excellent basketball player there at ISU. I remember when he graduated the player that took his place was a player by the name of Gary Thompson from Roland, Iowa and he ended up an All American basketball player and went on into a sports broadcasting career.
There was one game that stands out in my mind and I am pretty sure it was a game we played when we were seniors.
The game was against Harlan. Looking at the final score above I know it was our senior year because the score of our first game against them was Sac City 30 and Harlan 32. It was a very low scoring game.
Harlan had a very tall team and was beating everyone they played . Coach Long came up with a strategy that almost helped us to win. But we ended up loosing by one basket.
Harland had 3 of their starting players that were 6 foot 5 inches tall or taller. I think the tallest was 6 foot 8 inches tall. Our tallest player was 6 foot 3 inches tall.
Coach Longs basic strategy was to slow the pace of the ballgame down to make them play “our” game.
You could see the frustration on their faces as we were able to do just that. I think the half-time score was something like 14 to 16 and we were ahead.
Well that’s about all I remember about that game except we really felt like Goliath defeating the Giants and had a good feeling even when we lost by 2 points to them. We certainly won a moral victory.
Boy, my mind is pretty blank to any other events other than graduation night in the auditorium. Our featured speaker at our graduation ceremony was Ray Puge, I did remember that. I don’t remember what he was or if he later became famous.
Oh, I was going to tell you that the two classmate from our group that decided to go to California were Kelley Hoskins and Paul Laughin. They both went on to very successful careers and college graduates and are now a couple of my best supporters of these Blogs!
Well I think I will close out this section on “High School Days and move on to the next section. If you can think of anything you might want me to mention please don’t hesitate telling me.
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