Celebration a Sports Journey - Part 2

Basketball

My first formal experience with basketball was during eighth grade. That year the LaSalle city schools joined a competitive lightweight and heavyweight basketball league that included Peru, Oglesby, Spring Valley, and a few other cities. Louie Orlandini and I were co-captains of the lightweight team. We didn’t win a game that year but we did have a good start under John Roach who was a really good coach.

The next year I began my high school career at LaSalle-Peru Township High School. I was 5’ 5” tall and weighed 135 lbs. The basketball coaches were interested in somewhat taller players so I played in the intramural league. During my senior year, in 1944, when I had grown 1 inch taller, I got some, but not much, attention from the varsity coach. We were playing a game late in the season when some of the varsity players were playing on teams in our league for the fun of it. We were opposing the team that had been joined by the captain and center of the varsity team, Jack H., tall for that time at 6’ 2”. Our team met and my teammates “decided” that I would guard him. To make a long story short, I held him to 6 points and stole the ball enough times to have us score more points than that. We lost anyway but the crowd, including the varsity coach,  enjoyed the game.

Soon after that game I graduated and became a member of the U.S. Navy. After the war ended, my Carrier Aircraft Service Unit (CASU) joined a basket league on Tinian Island. I was a guard and we ran a good fast break - I scored 29 points one game. I was selected on the island Navy All-Star team but didn’t play much against the Army and Marines because I was soon on my way home - joining my three Army older brothers.

One afternoon during my freshman year at LPO, I left my bowling job and a friend and I watched my LPO team play basketball. After a while, I said to my friend, “ I could play with them” and he said, “Why not try out next year.” So I did. I made the cut and played in every game. I didn’t score much - high score 12 points - because we had a set offense - I was busy feeding the center and my favorite forward, Dale Eiten, who had a great outside shot. I played a pretty good defensive game against our opposing guards.

In my coursework, I took some coaching classes. During the remainder of my career, I coached junior high school teams for 3 years, high school teams for 3 years, Babe Ruth 12-year old baseball teams for 6 years, and taught Kiddy P. E. classes (K-6) for 2 years.

Golf

I didn't play golf until I was in my 40s. My brother Joe had started playing golf and bowling shortly after getting out of the Army - and he was quite good at both of them. He introduced me to the Deer Park golf course near our home. I never became as good in golf as I had been in my other sports. I didn’t join a golf club until I joined the Old Wayne Golf Club in 1964. Starting that late in life was not good - I spent too much time being aware of the traps, the out-of-bounds, and the water hazards instead of focussing on where I wanted the ball to go. 

I taught elementary schools and at Elmhurst College (now University) in the west suburban Chicago area until 1978 and played at Old Wayne for quite a few years. On June 26, 1966, playing with Joe and a friend, I teed up my Maxfli ball on the par 3, 170 yard 17th hole there. The hole was slightly uphill so I chose my Spalding 6 iron and  - OK. OK,  I made a hole-in-one. The following week I was playing with George Avery and he aced the 8th hole. (An interesting coincidence - 33 years, 3 months later my son, David, made a hole-in-one on that same hole, also using a 6 iron, but using a Titleist ball).

When I moved to Oklahoma I had more time to play. I retired from Oklahoma University at age 75 and played quite a bit at Lake Hefner Golf Club. I finally got up to a Nine handicap. Just suffice it to say that I learned golf late in life but it did become one of the best, most treasured activities in my life.

Classical Education and Player-Centered Coaching 

Throughout all of this evolving in my sports world, I was also evolving in my philosophy of teaching and even more so from my “Improving the Teaching of my students” to "Enhancing the Learning of my students.” I will be exploring this concept with you soon in two additional blogs.