Humboldt: City of dashed childhood basketball dreams

Kregg Halstead

For years thereafter whenever my family would drive through the city of Humboldt, it felt like I had been punched in the stomach, pierced in the heart and then the memories would all come rushing back …

The Storm Lake Tornado boys high school varsity basketball team faced the Humboldt Wildcats in both March 1976 and 1977 for the right to make the magical (even mythical) trip down to Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines to play in the boys’ state basketball tournament.

Both games were lifetimes onto themselves. They were tense, brutal, back and forth, up and down, nerve-racking affairs and the crowd noise when either team would score was deafening. As the games wore on the air temperature on the court and in the stands rose to unbearable levels.

But I jump ahead. Where did this actually all begin? How could a small child feel such angst simply by being driven through a perfectly normal looking medium-sized Iowa town?

I suppose for me it began right away when we moved to Storm Lake in August 1972 (I was six) to a house located at 911 Highview Dr., which by the most ironic of ironies, was located smack dab across the street from the parents of Ron (6’11”) and Randy (6’9”) Kennedy, whom had both in legendary fashion led Storm Lake to the large school (class AA) Iowa boys high school basketball championship in 1968, beating giant Des Moines Roosevelt in the final. And I thereafter loved to go to their house and Mrs. Kennedy was always thrilled to show me all her basketball photos of her famous sons.

We lived at this house for three years and alas, I never saw Ron in person, but I did see Randy several times from across the street when he would come home to visit.

Skip forward to 1974-75, and I was in third grade at West School. My regular teacher had suffered a stroke during a fall and her replacement (must have been for six months through the end of that school year) was a young teacher who at most was 28. Her name was Mrs. Hess and although herself strikingly beautiful, what was more interesting and important for the boys in my class, her husband was the varsity boys basketball coach. So even though the team was pretty average in that year, it was impossible not to start paying attention to basketball and my friend Brian Caswell and I used to specially play outside at recess (no matter how cold it was) hoping that Mrs. Hess would notice our basketball abilities and say something to her husband about us. And significantly, that year’s varsity was actually quite junior and even sophomore dominated so bigger and better things could not help but follow the next year.

Skip ahead to that next year, 1975-76, and the Storm Lake boys varsity program was quickly on fire.

First, it had a new young, dynamic, master strategist head coach in Larry Parman, who had been incredibly successful coaching girls basketball in Eagleville, Mo., prior to moving to Storm Lake. Second, over the course of one weekend in early December, the team miraculously won a game by one point at Spencer on guard Bruce Mills’ 35 foot jumper (just a little inside half court) at the buzzer and then the next night also won a one point game at heavily-favored Sioux City East with Mills being the leading scorer (his weekend earning him prep of the week in the Des Moines Register).

So, I was already in love with this team. Starters, centers Rich Malcolm and Greg Menning were both 6’6’, forwards/shooting guards Jim Felton and Alan Engebretson were 6’2” with point guard Mills 6’0” and the team also had a ton of depth. Cursed, our family had not attended those memorable two games at Spencer and at Sioux City East having listened to them instead over KAYL and the familiar and friendly voice of Chuck Ney. But over those next two seasons, we never again missed a game. In fact, we lived for the games.

Bruce Mills right away was my favorite. Due to our absence at Spencer, I did not see his magical shot but heard so many versions of it over the years from those who were there. And I remember reading Coach Parman’s comments that he was not surprised by the shot as Bruce had practiced such shots the entire previous summer in his driveway on West Fifth Street.

And this SL team was highly ranked — basically No. 3 all year in class AA (which was by then the middle school class) behind only Cedar Rapids Regis and Pella. And despite playing a brutal schedule, the Tornadoes racked up win after win. I believe their final record was 18-3. How good were they? Well I recall Dick Point, the outstanding coach of the boys varsity basketball team at Cherokee, once remarking that his 1975-76 team (Dean Snows, Steve Menke, the Holton Twins, et al) was actually his best (and he was the dean of the Lakes Conference — coaching for more than 30 years) as the Braves only lost that entire year to one single team, but that team (SL) narrowly beat them each of the three times they played and on three different floors in fact with the final game being the District Final in Denison’s fieldhouse. In fact, both years SL in identical fashion first beat ranked Denison in the District Semi-Final and beat then ranked Cherokee in the District Final. These were also very tough games against fantastic teams, but SL was the better team of the three powerhouse schools.

So Sub-state was here, this was the big time, everything at stake and not in a high school gym, but rather in NCAA Division III Siebens Center none the less, and the place was packed with fans coming and standing in line already at 4 p.m. to watch a high school game, which did not start for another three long hours. This again was early March 1976 and at that time it would have seemed incredible (even unbelievable) that nearly the exact, same, identical, scene would play out one year later. And the opponent located about 60 miles east and a little north, Humboldt, had to come to us. So in many ways it seemed liked a home game.

And even attending the games did not have their lack of opportunity costs as in March 1976 the smash ABC mini-series based on Irvin Shaw’s epic novel “Rich Man, Poor Man” (Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, Ed Asner – i.e. about Rudy and Tom Jordache vs. Falconetti) was being shown, but in those pre-VCR days, attending the basketball game meant not seeing the concluding episode (I have never seen it to this day).

All started well with the March 1976 game as SL was up 13 points in the first half and I remember thinking this is going to be easy. But Humboldt did not give an inch, and the longer the game went the more it was in doubt and ultimately, I believe we had a chance to win in regulation but missed our chance and then the overtime was that rarest of things in life — perfect — but a perfect disaster.

Humboldt could do no wrong and SL could do no right and they must have won by 10 to 12 points going away. It was hard to take and not easy to say goodbye to the seniors, but other than Manning and Menning, the key contributors would be back the next year, so this loss did not end the world.

The March 1977 game though did end the world (or nearly so) … with SL clinging to a one point lead with 11 seconds left. We missed a one and one and Humboldt got the rebound and had one last chance.

Their star player forward, Jamie Lilly, who averaged more than 24 points a game in those pre-three point shot days, and who would go on to star at Western Illinois, however, badly missed an off balance poorly set 20 foot jump shot with say three seconds remaining. But as long shots produce long rebounds, the ball took a strange high bounce off of the backboard and rim and overshot those madly and aggressively trying to get to the rebound. Instead, the ball bounced at about the bottom of the key in the lane and the Wildcats point guard, Mickey Greene (whom had scored a mere six points in the game up until then) astutely sensing that he did not have time to make a normal grab, catch and shot instead quickly redirected the ball at the basket with a little pooch shot and with dread in my heart, watching as an 11-year-old fifth grader, I watched the ball forever go in and Humboldt for the second time in two years had managed to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat when SL was oh so close to having both games won.

I remember leaving the stands, the court, and Siebens with a sick feeling of dread and shock. I told my parents that I needed to walk home just to get it out of my system and in those safe and secure now far off 1970s of my childhood they let me.

Like JFK and then RFK both being assassinated, it seemed incredible that such calamity and tragedy could happen again (twice to the same community). It took a long time thereafter for Siebens to again become a neutral place to go. And most sadly, this was the end of the line for those tremendous seniors.

I remember maybe to help all of us make peace and part with our emotions, the team organized sort of a game against the coaches in the SL high school gym, say two weeks later, which was nice and comical to attend with many of the players doing their best to dunk volleyballs. But that was it and this magnificent team never played an organized basketball game together again.

In another ironic twist the SL Advertising Guide route (70 papers) that I was given in 1978 (when I was in sixth grade, my first job) included Bruce Mill’s house and each Wednesday in making delivery, I would see the basketball court in his large driveway where he had practiced to one day be able to beat Spencer with his incredible shot. Although I would hope, I never saw him though, as I suppose he went off to college as he had been a co-valedictorian of his high school class and was an outstanding scholar.

And I remember my mother’s dear late friend, JoAnn Shultz, whose son Roger had been a key starter on the SL 1980 boys varsity basketball team, which had won the Iowa state title (to wash some of these Humboldt tears away) saying to my parents and me in reflecting years later on, those Humboldt games and the lingering feeling of disappointment, “Why did we allow ourselves to care so much about a game being played with a ball by 17 and 18-year-olds? But I guess we did, that can’t be changed, and it still stings.”

Sports are wonderful. Sports are beautiful. They give rise to golden moments and great Cinderella stories but they can also tear your heart out if you get too close to them. I do not think thereafter I ever allowed myself to quite become so emotionally attached to a sports team. But I loved the boys varsity basketball Tornadoes as a West schooler. In those days, I only wore green and white from socks and shorts to shoes. But more importantly, my heart and soul burned even brighter shades of green and white that now (49 years later), I cherish each of these what I consider to be only wonderful memories as these were the best times of our lives.

Kregg Halstead graduated from Storm Lake High School in 1984 and was a two-year starter on the boys varsity basketball team under Coach Parman. The 1983 team lost in the District Final to and at Denison by two points ... the Sub-state game would have been winnable.