Friday, March 21, 2008

BASKETBALL

Pictured on this 1960 Prowlers picture are: L to R: Wayne Bjerken, Steve Embury, Gary Anderson, Don Ulferts, Elton Hornseth, Ron Solheim, Ron Hanson,( high point scorer @ 367), Bob Pearson, Darrel Nelson, Eddie Lietzow, Harvey Ebbighausen, and Dave Hauswirth. Kneeling are: Student manager Pete Prichard, Coach H Story, assistant coach J Mrkonich, and Student manager, Bob Benke.
Allen Field House on Naismith Avenue in Lawrence, KS

Old Trunks can not pass up an opportunity to cheer for the Jayhawks and to remember cheering for the Prowlers!

For those of us who attended Lincoln High School in Thief River Falls, we cheered our team on in this NEW IN 1940 gymnasium. In a 1940 newspaper, Old Trunks read:

January 1940
The quint will play Eveleth in the new gym which boasts a seating capacity of 1,700.

February 1, 1940
The paper states the basketball game tomorrow night with the Bemidji Lumberjacks, the only high school team to hit the Prowlers this year, should be grand in the new gym. The Prowlers will have to be up if they are to run off with a win.

March 28, 1940
Prowlers loose to Bemidji 25 to 23.


1960
The Prowlers DID defeat Bemidji! According to the Prowler, "The Prowlers proceeded to whip the favored Bemidji team by a margin of 61-53 for regional honors! It was, for the citizen's of TRF, like winning a state championship!

Hurrah for the Prowlers!



Regarding KU....................



James Naismith was the Canadian physical education instructor who invented basketball in 1891. James Naismith was born in Almonte, Ontario and educated at McGill University and Presbyterian Cllege in Montreal. He was the physical education teacher at McGill University (1887 to 1890) and at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts (1890 to 1895). At Springfield College (which was then the Y.M.C.A. training school), James Naismith, under the direction of American phys-ed specialist Luther Halsey Gulick, invented the indoor sport of basketball.








The Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball program is the intercollegiate men's basketball program of the University of Kansas. The program is classified in the NCAA's Division I, and the team competes in the Big 12 Conference. Considered one of the best basketball programs in collegiate sports history, their first coach, was the inventor of the game, James Naismith.

You may have never heard of Danny and the Miracles. You may not know the intensity of the sport of basketball in Lawrence, KS. If you have ever been in Allen Field House as one of the 16, 300 fans when the Rock Chalk chant starts, you understand what it is like to be caught up in the magic of the game. On April 4, 1988, a Kansas Jayhawk Basketball team that had entered the NCAA Tournament unranked faced the powerful Oklahoma Sooners, a team that had twice beaten the Jayhawks during the regular season, for the National Championship. OU was picked to win by nearly everyone. But KU had Danny Manning and a stable of scrappy role players, and in one of the finest games in Final Four history, the Jayhawks won the National Championship 83-79.

Let's hope the late, great Wilt Chamberlain is smiling on the roster of Jayhawks in the March Madness of 2008!


Go Jayhawks!

No comments: