The State Boys High School BasketballTournament can be reasonablydescribed as being among Minnesota’s

most significant cultural events this side ofthe State Fair. Since 1913, these tournamentshave:

• Determined more than 160 championsin all classes;

• Allowed more than 300 different schoolsrepresenting almost half of all Minnesotacities and towns (about 350 out of 854) theopportunity to compete for those champion -ships;

• Provided an estimated 16,000 highschool athletes the thrill of their young livesin competing at the state tournament level;

• Been witnessed in person by more than5 million fans, and by millions more viaradio broadcasts since 1938 and televisionbroadcasts since 1955.

Why Basketball?During the single-class era from 1913 to

1970, the state tournament often was themost popular event on Minnesota’s sportingcalendar. It was the first statewide high schooltournament, pre-dating the second, boys’track and field, by more than a decade. Thehockey tournament did not exist until 1945and football’s Prep Bowl was an innovationof the ’70s.

Basketball enjoyed a special place in early20th century Minnesota culture. Why?

Sports such as baseball and football had

evolved in the dirt and the sweat and the spitof American playgrounds and were thusthought to be rough and uncouth.

Basketball had beeninvented by Dr. James A.Naismith, an instructor atthe Inter national TrainingSchool of the YoungMen’s Christian Associa -tion at Springfield, Mass.,now Springfield Univer -sity. The YMCAs, theChristian churches andthe medical profession all

promoted the game in a drive to improvephysical fitness among America’s young men.It was said that a healthy body leads to goodmorals, and “what is beneficial to the body(also) is so to the mind.”

Boys and girls played basketball because itwas fun. But their parents, educators andcommunity leaders embraced the game andbrought it into their schools because theywere promised spiritual, mental, social,moral, as well as purely physical improve-ment for their children.

Yet, as early as 1901, George B. Aiton,Minnesota’s Inspector of State High Schools,found an “excessive desire to win” in theschools. The state tournament provided lever-age toward the control of this “excessivedesire to win.”

A committee was created at the inaugural1913 tournament. Rev. Fred B. Hill, professor

of Biblical literature and chairman of the fac-ulty committee on athletics at CarletonCollege where the tournament was hosted,was elected as its chair. The committee’s pur-pose was to assure that a tournament wouldbe held again in 1914 and thereafter. It quick-ly established eligibility rules and encouragedhigh schools to play only among themselves,and it disqualified teams that did not complywith its rules in 1915 and 1917. This commit-tee became the Minnesota State High AthleticAssociation in 1916, later to become theMinnesota State High School League in 1929.

The Single Class EraThe tournament grew slowly but steadily

from humble beginnings. Attendance at thefirst site, Carleton College in Northfield,peaked at about 2,000 in 1920, when a largecontingent of fans came from nearby RedWing. The tournament moved to the TwinCities in 1923, and some 10,000 saw the1929 and 1933 finals with Red Wing againproviding a lion’s share of fans.

Enthusiasm for the tournament washeightened by the occasional success of thesmall town “Cinderellas.” The theme hadbeen established at the very first tournament,when coach-less Fosston prevailed in whatwas called “a complete surprise.”

The first school actually dubbed aCinderella was Gaylord in 1926. After its 13-9championship game upset of Gilbert, enthusi-astic fans passed a hat around the Kenwood

B Y M A R C H U G U N I N

6 2012 Minnesota State Boys’ Basketball Tournament

Dr. James Naismith

Armory lobby to raise funds to support theteam’s trip to the national tournament inChicago. More than $500 was collected.

In 1946 more than 16,000 fans came tosee not only the smallest school from thesmallest town ever to reach the state finals,but also the first Minnesota high school torun a modern fast break. Lynd took No. 1-rated Crosby-Ironton completely by surprisein the first round, 58-47. The Rangers tookthree timeouts in the first quarter alone tocatch their breath. Lynd’s semifinal win overStillwater 46-39 featured the tournament’sfirst behind-the-back pass by Casper Fisher.

The 1951 final between Canby and Gilbertwas witnessed by 18,000 fans, and more than19,000 saw the tournament’s most famousCinderella team, Edgerton, in 1960.

In total, 15 schools now classified in ClassA won single-class championships: Fosston(1913), Virginia (1916), Aurora (1923),Gaylord (now Sibley East, 1926), Chisholm(1934), Mountain Lake (1939), Breckenridge(1940), Buhl (now Mountain Iron-Buhl,1941 and 1942), Gilbert (now Eveleth-Gilbert, 1951), Edgerton (1960), Luverne(1964) and Sherburn (now Martin CountyWest, 1970). Twelve more small schools fin-ished as runners-up.

Along with the small town Cinderellas,Iron Range teams also were fan favorites.Nobody saw them as underdogs orCinderellas; no less than six of them, all ClassA schools today, won state titles between

1916 and 1951, second at that time only tothe Big Nine Conference with seven.

More importantly, the Range kept up-tempo basketball alive in the 1920s and1930s when most Minnesota high schoolshad adopted a slowed-down, ball control,defensive-oriented style. Chisholm’s “point-a-minute” teams under coach Harvey Roelsset the pace and won the 1934 state champi-onship.

Enthusiasm for the single-class tourna-ment was also enhanced by its broadcast on astatewide radio network b eginning in 1938,and by television broadcasts beginning in1955.

How They Played the GameIn its earliest days, most teams did not

have a coach. Left to their own devices, boysdid what boys will do. They ran, they

jumped, they flung the ball at the hoop.Fosston’s 1913 champions “bewildered theiropponents” with short, rapid passes thrownwhile the boys ran in circles — a style of playborn of the expedient of practicing in a class-room. Besides no coach, Fosston also did nothave a gymnasium.

But by the end of the Northfield era in1922, most schools had a paid, professionalcoach, and now it was the coaches’ turn to dowhat coaches do, injecting “discipline” intothe mix — meaning at least in part a newreluctance to shoot the ball.

By the 1940s, however, three new offen-sive strategies emerged — the low post, thefast break and the jump shot — and scoringwent through the roof. In 1933 Red Wing hadbeaten Minneapolis North in the final 16-13.In 1956 Minneapolis Roosevelt destroyedBlue Earth 101-54.

The low post loudly announced itself withthe appearance of Jim McIntyre ofMinneapolis Patrick Henry in 1944 and1945. Four inches taller than the tallest boyto previously play in the tournament,McIntyre broke the scoring record for a singlegame three times with 29 points, then 36,and 43 more in the 1945 final. He set tourna-ment records with 86 and then 100 points.

St. Paul Humboldt’s 6-6 Jim Fritsche in1949, Gilbert’s 6-9½ Bill Simonovich in 1951,New Prague’s 6-10 Ron Johnson in 1955 and1956, Edina’s 6-7 Bob Zender in 1966, 1967

Continued on page 77

2012 Minnesota State Boys’ Basketball Tournament 7

1946 Lynd

and 1968, 6-7 Mark Olberding of Melrose in1973 and 1974, and 7-footer Randy Breuer ofLake City in 1978 and 1979 are only a few ofthe dominant big men to follow in McIntyre’sfootsteps.

Red Wing in 1953, Cloquet in 1963 andWabasso in 1997 followed Lynd’s example inseeking to run the fast break on virtuallyevery possession. From Fosston to Chisholmand from Lynd to Cloquet, up-tempo ballthrilled state tournament fans. But the bigguys in the low post often went home withthe biggest hardware.

The jump shot developed only slowly,though newspapers in the 1930s are filledwith photos of players shooting while jump-ing. But the phrase “jump shot” did notappear in state tournament reportage until1952 and 1953 when Dave Tschimperle ofHopkins and Omar Larson of Granite Fallswere described as the best “jump shooters.”By 1957, Tommy Nordland of MinneapolisRoosevelt was hailed as the best outsideshooter in tournament history for his “longjump shots.”

Equal OpportunityEdgerton (1960), Marshall (1963) and

Luverne (1964) won three state titles in fiveyears despite the claim that the small schoolscouldn’t compete. Ironically, it wasMinnesota’s smaller schools themselves whohad promulgated this idea. They had lobbiedthe High School League for a two-class tour-nament for more than 30 years.

By the 1960s the small schools had anunexpected ally — the larger schools in theTwin Cities. After World War II, in Minnesotaas elsewhere, families had stampeded fromthe big cities down a network of newInterstate highways to equally new suburbancommunities. Enrollments skyrocketed atsuburban high schools while stagnating else-where. By the time the Baby Boom had runits course, half of the state’s population wasconcentrated in the Twin Cities and, yet, themetro area comprised only two of the tourna-ment’s eight regions.

Besides, after Edina’s three-peat in 1966,1967 and 1968, led by coach Duane Baglienand center Bob Zender, it seemed that,indeed, the small towns could no longercompete.

So competition was divided into twoclasses beginning in 1971. Ironically, twosmaller schools — St. James in 1972 andMelrose in 1974 — won two of five “overall”championship games. Counting Sherburn’s1970 championship in the last of the singleclass tournaments, the small schools hadagain captured three titles in five years.

The two-class system not only guaranteedthat eight smaller schools would play in thestate tournament, it also enabled inner cityschools to make their return. Minneapolisschools, which had won 14 of 15 Region 5titles from 1933 to 1947 and eight state

championships between 1921 and 1957, wereunable to gain even a single state tournamentberth between the years of 1958 and 1968.

No African-American player is known tohave played in the tournament until 1947when St. Paul’s Marshall High Schooladvanced to the tournament from Region 4and two players, Leon Combs and CurtisRussell, matched up with Crosby-Ironton.Later in 1951 and 1952, Bob Wagner ofHopkins earned all-tournament honors.LeRoy Gardner and Jim Hill of St. PaulCentral did the same in 1965 and 1967,respectively. Then, beginning in 1971, aparade of outstanding African-Americanplayers appeared. In 1976 came the coup degrace as Minneapolis Marshall-U became thefirst mostly African-American team to win astate title.

The premier school of the two-class erawas Bloomington Jefferson, as coach JackEvens became the first coach — boys or girls— to win four titles. Surprisingly, these werethe only titles of the two-class era for theonce-unbeatable Lake Conference.

The Multi-Class EraThe multi-class format enables schools to

qualify for more tournaments and win moretitles than ever before. In comparison, thestate’s first dynasty, Red Wing, won four ofthe first 21 tournaments, in 1915, 1920, 1922and 1933. No boys’ team would surpass RedWing’s record in the 20th century.

Today, Hopkins has amassed eight statetitles thus far and Minneapolis Patrick Henrysix, including four-in-a-row from 2000through 2003. Southwest MinnesotaChristian also pulled off a four-peat in Class Afrom 1999 to 2002. Minneapolis North andDeLaSalle each has won five championships.

Hopkins coach Kenny Novak, Jr., has won

six titles. Larry McKenzie of Patrick Henry hasjoined Evens with four. Only Baglien everwon as many as three titles during the singleclass era.

Like their teams and coaches, individualboys have far out-stripped the career records ofyore. As of 1970-1971, Ron Johnson of NewPrague, with 203 points in the 1955 and 1956tournaments, was the top all-time scorer.

In the multi-class era, Johnson’s recordhas been exceeded by: Cody Schilling ofEllsworth, the only boy ever to lead the tour-nament in scoring for three years (267points); Khalid El-Amin of MinneapolisNorth (238); Isaiah Dahlman of Braham(236); Mark Olberding of Melrose (228); andBen Johnson of DeLaSalle (227).

The three-point shot has also helped toinflate individual scoring. Cory Mountain’s51-point outburst for Albrook in 2006included a record 10 three-point field goals.Mountain broke the previous record of 50points set in 1978 by Jimmy Jensen ofBemidji who scored his points inside anddown low.

The Transition GameIt is difficult today to imagine that the

three-point shot was invented by fellows whowanted nothing more than to open up thelane for more of that good old low-postgame. Instead, defenses adapted, so offenseshad to do the same. The goal now is to get ahigh-percentage shot, which used to mean ashot close to the basket. Now, it just meansnot having a defender in your face, whichhappens further from the basket and beforethe defense gets set. The best of both worldsis to create havoc and turnovers in the back-court, and easy baskets in transition fromdefense to offense.

History (Continued from page 7)

MIN

NE

SO

TA P

RE

P P

HO

TO

/ M

nPre

pPho

to.c

om

2012 Minnesota State Boys’ Basketball Tournament 77

Continued on page 78

Tom Norland of Minneapolis Roosevelt was astandout jump shooter in 1957.

Isaiah Dahlman received the 2006 tourna ment’sMost Valuable Player Award.

78 2012 Minnesota State Boys’ Basketball Tournament

The Wabasso Rabbits and Red LakeWarriors remain the exemplars of the newgame. Wabasso came into the 1997 tourna-ment averaging more than 100 points pergame. In their semifinal, the Rabbits led theWarriors 81-62 after three periods and by 14with 1:15 left. Then Red Lake guard GeraldKingbird scored 13 points in 57 seconds totie the score at 105. The Rabbits pulled awayin overtime to a 117-113 win. Hancock cagedthe Rabbits in the final the next day.

Similarly, the biggest stars of the past 15years have been those who mastered the

full-court transition game — guards like JoeColeman and Blake Hoffarber of Hopkins,Dahlman; El-Amin; Schilling, and others —rather than the low-post stars of yesteryear.

Speaking of transitions, what will the next100 years of Minnesota high school basket-ball tournaments bring? Competitive balanceis a concern, as is declining attendance.Whatever happens, it’s worth rememberingthat the tournament was founded as a vehiclefor teaching ethical and sportsmanlike play.As long as the focus on the well-being of student-athletes is retained, as long as

the tournament supports the educational mission, it will continue to be one ofMinnesota’s most beloved traditions.

Marc Hugunin is co-author of MinnesotaHoops: Basketball in the North Star State, published by the Minnesota Historical Society,and author of a Web blog of the same name,located at www.minnesotahoops.blogspot.com.

History (Continued from page 77)

1997 Red Lake

Dav

id S

wan

son