Revisting 1963

With  my 50th  high school reunion coming up next summer,   I decided to  revisit  a  post  I wrote  three years  ago on my blog,  Bookemdanosports,  about my high school basketball team that won the 1962-63 state title. It's funny the things you remember, and the fact I was the school newspaper's sports reporter at the time, well I guess it's understandable  that I would remember the event which happened 50 years ago. My post from August/2009...


Old Timers, especially the sports-crazed ones like me, are known for sitting around the neighborhood coffee shop and discussing earth-shattering stuff and trying to outdo their fellow compadres with comments like, "We had the best high school basketball team ever to set foot on a gym floor."

Okay, maybe it would be tough to top the true story of the small town of Milan, Indiana in the movie, "Hoosiers".  Of course, Hollywood stretched the truth a bit to add more of a dramatic flair. For instance, in the flick the town was called Hickory. The Milan Indians actually had 10 players, not six, but the fact the small town captivated Indiana basketball fans by reaching, and then winning, the championship game in 1954 was true.

And now for my story.

In 1963, my high school team, the Tucson Catalina Trojans won the state title by upsetting the powerful Phoenix South Mountain Rebels, 48-44, to win their first-ever basketball title. The Trojans had to get past the outstanding play of Rebel center Bob Wallace to garner the title. Wallace scored 21 points and grabbed 19 rebounds against the Trojans.

Wallace, who was also a football star at South Mountain, went on to play at Phoenix College and Texas Western and eventually ended up with the Chicago Bears and enjoyed a five-year career in the NFL. As for the Trojans, they won the title despite having their star player, Dick Chapel, sidelined with the mumps. The Trojans, coached by Galen Kintner, received a 16-point scoring effort from John Mustonen and another nine markers from Craig Gillaspie, as they came back from a 9-8 first quarter deficit to lead at the half, 30-19, and then held on down the stretch for the victory.

Bruce Larson, the head basketball coach at the University of Arizona, said after witnessing the game, "Kintner did a tremendous job. But remember that not even the greatest coach in the world could win a state championship without great material. It takes good coaching and good kids to win."

The Trojans certainly had that covered.

I wonder where they all are now...guys like Chapel, Mustonen, Gillaspie...along with Gordon Pixley, Joe Breck, Marc Stumpf, Glen Lamb, Terry Moe, Al Lindberg, Dave Supina, Dan Flores, Bob Donald and Jim Maneval.

Those were the days.