Panthers were District Champs in 1952!

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Assumption had big sports legacy - Part II

This is the second of a two-part series that covers the highlights of athletics at Assumption Academy in Chadron during its 38-year history.  Written by Con Marshall, these newspaper stories were originally published in August of 2011.  Our thanks to Con for allowing us to use this story and to Jim Sandstrom for sharing photos from some of his years as a student athlete at the Academy.

Chadron Assumption had many athletic highlights

by Con Marshall

George Shinker was just 20 years old and still two years away from graduating from Chadron State College when he was named Assumption Academy’s head coach of all three sports in the fall of 1953. He had graduated from the Academy in May 1950 after being a standout on the basketball team.

  Shinker’s first football team at Assumption was a six-man crew that had just two seniors on the roster and went 0-7. However, during the next five seasons, the Panthers were 34-7-1 on the gridiron. The 1955, ’57 and ’58 teams lost just one game apiece. The 1955 team was also tied.

The Panthers also were strong in basketball under Shinker. They won four consecutive district tournament championships, but always lost out in regional tournament contests.  This was an era when it wasn’t easy to make it to Lincoln because only four teams were in the state tournament in each class.  The 1957 team was beaten by Uehling, which is located in northeast Nebraska about 30 miles from the Iowa state line. The playoff game was in Plainview, nearly as far from Chadron as Lincoln.

1957-58 Assumption Academy Panthers
(Photo courtesy of Jim Sandstrom)

The 1958 team went 19-4 and helped Chadron earn the title of Basketball Capital of Nebraska.  Chadron Prep was 19-3 and Chadron High was 17-3 that season.  (Editors Note:  To see a larger version of the photo above — and others — visit our Chadron Schools Gallery.

The Panthers got a boost during the 1950s when Chuck and Larry Murray came from their parents’ ranch on the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming and enrolled at Assumption. They were tough and talented enough to have played for any high school football team in the country. They also were basketball standouts at Assumption.

During a recent telephone conversation, Chuck said his family lived 24 miles from town, all of it dirt road. Therefore, his parents decided it would be more economical and safer if they went elsewhere to high school. They sought information about Jesuit institutions and chose Assumption over Alliance St. Agnes.  Their sister, Ivora, also enrolled at Assumption during this era.

Chuck said one of his many memories of his days at Assumption was going to basketball practice early in the morning so the Panthers could use the Community Building (now Middle School Gym), where their games were played. Chadron High, Chadron State and Chadron Prep practiced there in the afternoon and evenings. The Assumption Arena opened the year after Chuck graduated from the Academy in 1956.

  Following their days at Assumption, the Murray brothers stuck around and also played football and graduated from CSC.  I may be wrong, but I think they are the only Assumption grads to earn letters in football at CSC aside from Dale Tangeman in 1939 and ’40.  Both of the Murrays also went on to earn master’s degrees in education from the University of Wyoming.

George Shinker 
(Photo courtesy of Jim Sandstrom)

Some of Shinker’s other top athletes included Doyle and Dan Hucke, Jim, Jerry and Dick Miller, Larry Chamberlain, Don McVeigh, Dave Mailander, Bill Marchant, John Hostler, Wayne Sides, Bernard Lecher, Jim Konrath, George Bamsey and Bob Zahm, who earned all-state basketball honors from at least one Nebraska newspaper as a senior in 1958 and remains one of this community’s most avid sports fans.

Shinker left Assumption for a teaching and coaching job at Lusk in the spring of 1959. He earned a master’s degree from CSC in 1962 and had an outstanding career as a school administrator. He was the principal three years at Hemingford, the principal three years and superintendent five years at Ainsworth, the superintendent at Creighton seven years and the superintendent of the West Holt Schools at Atkinson 16 years. He was on the Nebraska School Activities Association’s board of control before retiring in 1995. He died at age 76 in 2009 with many friends and admirers.

The next two years after Shinker left, the Panthers were coached by Chadron State PE majors.  Jim Davison coached the 1959 football team that went 7-0-1 with the only blemish a 13-13 tie with St. Agnes and Rod Borders was the coach in the fall of 1960 when Mullen dealt the Panthers their only loss during a 7-1 season.

  

Complete statistics from that era don’t seem to be available, but a story in the Chadron Record said Bob Marchant, who was just a sophomore, had touchdown runs of 85 and 90 yards during a 31-7 threshing of Sidney St. Pat’s in 1959.

Take me out to the ball game!

By Larry Miller

As the spring training Cactus League winds down in the Phoenix area and major league baseball teams prepare to swing in to action for the regular season, a group of a dozen or so Chadron folks found themselves at Nando’s Mexican restaurant in Chandler, Arizona last week for a get-together.

Cheryl and Larry Moody

Now, that’s not unusual.  There’ve been gatherings of  former Chadron residents and “Snowbirds” in Arizona for many years  It’s always fun to swap stories about Nebraska and get reacquainted with good friends from the past.

But we thought this one was special.  Especially for those of us who played “Ward” baseball back in the 1950’s.

Larry and Cheryl (Haskell) Moody now make their home in Chandler, and they brought to this gathering an artifact from the past that intrigued many of us.

It was an “Official Little League” Spalding baseball with the following inscription:  “To Mr. K. Moody from Fourth Ward ‘Champs’ ‘54”    And scribbled all around the ball were the names of those proud youngsters of south Chadron who played our version of Little League baseball that year in Chadron.

We found the following signatures:  Jim Saults, Jimmy Fitzgibbon, Jim Sandstrom, John Helzer, Charles Nelson, Douglas McKinnon, Charles Childerston, Larry Moody, Danny Davis, Eddie Reinking, George Blundell, Tom Saults, Bill Rice,  Jon Sandstrom, Eugene Cornish, Dick Muma and Richard Burkhiser.

“K. Moody,” of course, was Kenny Moody, whom many will remember as a long-time Dawes County resident who was a staunch enthusiast for youth sports activities in Chadron for decades. And in the summer of 1954, he was a coach/manager for the Fourth Ward team.  As we recalled, that was a team sponsored by the Rotarians.  Ward One was sponsored by the Lions Club, and Ward Three by Kiwanis.  (Our memory of the Ward Three sponsor is MIA!)

Kenny and his wife, Wanda, moved to Arizona many years ago and are now both deceased.  Interestingly, three of their four children – Larry, Rebecca, and Lynn – also sought warmer climes and now live in the Phoenix area.  The eldest, Nancy, still lives in Chadron.

Ralph and Linda Byerly  

Spring training baseball games in “The Valley” of Arizona have always been popular – and it’s increasingly big business.  We attended a game here about 10 years ago and found it reminiscent of going to a Chadron Elks baseball game back in the ‘50s.  There were larger crowds here, of course, and the quality of play was a step up – but only a bit! 

Today, tens of millions of dollars have been poured in to new ball fields and training facilities in the Phoenix area, accompanied by ticket prices that have escalated to a level out of range for lots of folks.  Nonetheless, they still seem to fill the stadiums here with record crowds.

But our baseball “fix” this year didn't come from a Major League game.  It came in the form of an autographed Little League baseball from a half century ago in Chadron, Nebraska.  

This event was a Grand Slam!