Remembering high school basketball

I played Pea Ridge Blackhawk basketball in the 1950s, starting with junior high in 1952, and finally as a senior in high school for the 1956-1957 year.

We usually did rather well in competition with the other high school basketball teams in our area. In the earlier years that I recall, we would occasionally have a game against even some of the bigger schools in Benton County, such as Rogers, Bentonville and Siloam Springs. Especially in the later part of the season we would play in the Benton County Tournament against the teams from those bigger schools. But, normally we competed against teams from Gravette, Sulphur Springs, Decatur, Gentry, Mountainburg, Farmington, Elkins, Prairie Grove, Lincoln, Winslow and Greenland.

Usually, during my senior high career, we would compete in the Washburn Tournament in Washburn, Mo., where we competed with several Missouri high school teams, such as Blue Eye, Reeds Spring, Purdy, Midway, as well as with our arch-rival Washburn High School. Our Washburn Tournament experience usually involved losing our first game, then rebounding to come out as the winner of the consolation bracket. We seemed able to do well against the Missouri teams, except in the case of Midway. We were never able to beat them.

Among our Arkansas competitors, Prairie Grove was our nemesis in my days. I had a great ambition to beat Prairie Grove at least once while I was in high school. That was not to be. We came very close in our last game against them, but that was the game in which I got bashed in the face and had to go to the doctor with a broken nose. We lost that game by only a point. I guess that wasn’t too bad. We were never able to achieve a district championship, although we usually competed pretty well, making it into the semi-finals several times.

I try to be philosophical — as in life, we often don’t achieve quite the excellence or success that we have wished for, yet we feel that the effort was worth it all.

In my high school days, we were still primarily a basketball school. Coach Steve Coutchie did involve us in some track and field competitions, and we had a few baseball games against nearby high school teams, but basketball was our primary sports competition.

Pea Ridge football would wait for several more years, until 1963. Our basketball coach during the 1956-1957 school year was Phillip Ward. Coach Ward was not really trained in coaching, but had played football in high school. His strong point was in physical training and conditioning. When we first started the year with him, he got us all arranged about on the old gym floor and started a system of calisthenics. After a few minutes, many of us were pretty sure he was about to kill us with hard things to do.

It all started with “jumping jacks,” which was simple enough, combining jumps with arm exercise in which we went down to slap our hips then up to clap the hands over our heads. After we were totally exhausted from the beginning exercises, coach had us all lie down on the floor in a prone position, face down, then reach back and grasp our ankles, lift ourselves into a bow, and do rocking chair rocking on our stomachs. Then, when we thought we would pass out any minute, Coach stopped us, and assigned each of us to road work. We were to run out to the mill, sign the book there, and run back to the gym. In all that would be two miles. In those days, the mill was nearly a mile out of town, since town ended at what today is known as Patton Street. The EZ Mart today is on the spot once occupied by our feed mill and gas station.

I will say, that even though we thought at first that Coach Ward was a mean man, he did us good with the physical conditioning. I’m quite sure that we won many basketball games because we were able to endure to the end of games with stamina and strength.

We always wanted to win our games, of course, but we also always had coaches who would point out that winning is not the ultimate goal of our sports. The thought was, “It isn’t always whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”

The motivation was to do the best we could under the circumstances, and to keep trying to do better, keep learning to improve the strategy, and keep honing our skills at shooting, passing, rebounding, defending or dribbling for position. We were taught that the only real win was an honest win, where we played

the game according to the rules, dealing fairly with the other team and with the officials, and acting with sportsmanship.

Thinking a little about life skills, a game like basketball puts you in a position of needing to figure out what you need to do to be successful and to do well. You learn to assess what is working well and what is not, and recognizing that the attitude with which you go into an enterprise is very important.

I remember an occasion in which we were scheduled to host a basketball team from Hollister, Mo. None of us on our team even knew where Hollister was, and we just assumed that this was a rinky-dink team from a little wide spot in the road. Well, we got into the game and right away they were mopping up the floor with us. We could hardly get the ball, except for a few seconds after they scored. They were so quick and so sharp with their passing and seemed often to steal the ball from us before we could even advance to our end.

It was a lesson in attitude — never just presume that you are better than the other guys.

Editor’s note: This column first ran April 10, 1919. Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge and an awardwinning columnist, is vice president of Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by email at joe369@centurytel.net, or call 621-1621.