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| Pat Tanner |
I knew the Tanner family especially well. They had children who graduated from Morris High in the '70s. Pat Tanner was the clerical person for Jack Imholte, "The Silver Fox." Secretary? Administrative assistant? The terminology ought not matter too much.
I remember when Pat had a son on a high-climbing Tiger baseball team. Dr. Imholte reportedly got a little agitated by all the game commitments (distractions) that were piling up. Oh I'm sure it wasn't serious agitation. But we can understand the feeling about how high school sports just gets overwhelming sometimes. Lots of games and - ahem - high expectations placed on the media for bestowing proper attention. Now, why would that angle concern me so much?
The happy parents fill their calendars with all of this. Congrats to them because such achievements are praiseworthy. Well, with maybe an asterisk attached. Maybe the excitement about high school sports starts to overwhelm other aspects of school life and the variety of talents that kids display. No need to radically change anything, just pause for a moment to realize that sports should be appreciated in its own limited context.
Well, fat chance of that sinking in.
Oh, the anecdote about Imholte and the Tanner boy has "The Silver Fox" saying to Pat, "well, next I suppose they'll make nationals!" Cute.
The Tanner boy was younger than me but there was another Tanner in my MAHS class. That was Jeff. He really got established as a high school baseball coach at ACGC. I had the pleasure of photographing a smiling Jeff standing at the edge of the dugout at Chizek Field. Sometimes I'd go out of my way a little for old high school peers. "Hometown boy makes good."
Jeff was on the 1973 high school basketball team that won the old "District 21" title. My generation grew up with "District 21." Our basketball nemesis was the Breckenridge Cowboys who I'm sure made all of us resent the color green. At my advanced age now I look back with regret about the intensity of regional sports rivalries. Way too much emotion, did not reflect the best in human nature. My exposure to this got even worse through my newspaper career.
Progress
I am much more distant with my perspective today. But for what it's worth I sense we're more calm and civilized now. Let's examine factors. I can suggest the creation of the 4-class system for high school tournament sports. I realize that the premise in the movie "Hoosiers" was cute but in reality, the small schools had very rough going trying to climb in tournaments. Some natural resentment toward the big schools resulted.
Did anyone outside of Austin MN root for that team against Edgerton? And I have always thought that was sad. The guys with Austin just wanted to play basketball, to try hard to win. They were the "heavies." Edgerton defied the odds and won. But really, how often did this type of thing actually happen? Maybe there's a defense to be made of "only in America." Ah, where the little guy "can do it." Technically true.
Maybe it's a rallying cry from political conservatives who try to rationalize our economic system with its rich/poor dichotomy. It's getting worse now, isn't it?
"Anyone can make it." Pulls at your heartstrings.
Fairness but more travel
With the schools carved into more enrollment-based divisions, it means that when the post-season gets going, odds are for the teams to have to travel more - sometimes significantly further - to get matched up against comparable-sized schools. This wiped away the petty rivalries of small towns vs. other nearby small towns. Obviously many schools consolidated.
We're still charmed by "Hoosiers." But that's Hollywood.
The onerous travel burden is sometimes faced early in the post-season schedule. An example was when the Morris football team had to go to Fairmont down by the Iowa border for the first game. Jerry Witt was our coach then. I was not required to make that trip. But I could have been. It would not have been cool for me to protest.
Once Forum Communications bought the Morris newspaper, the management people sucked in their cheeks because "it was tight." The years of the Morrison ownership by contrast were relaxed. Well you can sense what I preferred. And it's not like the Forum was a business success here - it was the opposite. Today I don't think the braintrust with the Morris paper have cheeks sucked in.
My family was good friends with neighbor Les Lindor who had been chairman of the Morris school board. He was over for coffee and a snack one day and he expressed concern about high school sports teams having to travel so far. This was during the regular season too.
A football game at Thief River Falls? Something even more concerning IMHO: games in far-away places starting at 7 or 7:30 at night. Playoff football at Pillager? Too concerning from the standpoint of people having to drive home so late in the blackness of night, often feeling exhaustion from the game.
Pat Tanner's husband Jim was a dedicated promoter of youth sports. I remember when the whole Tanner family came to the P.E. Annex on the UMM campus for an "open gym" in the mid-1960s. The Annex was located where the (newer) science building is now. The early UMM basketball team played its games there.
There was no women's basketball in the earliest days. When did it get going? Well I know for the high school it was 1971-72. I once thought it was a year later than that, but then I remembered Leatrice Tomoson playing, wearing one of those red jumpsuit-style uniforms of the time. Leatrice graduated in 1972. She's one of those women about whom we'd think: Man if she was in high school today, what a prime candidate to play at a high collegiate level.
Girls sports was so fledgling in the early '70s. And as it made strides competitively speaking, Morris High did not keep up. This really frustrated me. And if I started expressing concern about that, the very people who should have agreed with me turned their anger toward me. The idea, I guess, was that I was promoting this win-lose criterion which contradicted the higher purpose of "academics."
Various people associated with UMM were notorious for thinking in such a way. Oh, they felt it essential that girls/women get equal resources. But to stress competitive success? They demurred on that. I know full well that winning is never guaranteed. But the challenge of trying to win is what undergirds these activities. I suppose people who are liberal politically have problems with that - it contradicts their egalitarian ethos.
The latter sounds alien to today's culture. Conservatism has advanced so far, it is mutating in various ways.
It's better today
The people associated with UMM today are to be blessed. From my perspective they no longer put on "effete" airs of being superior to everyone else, of claiming the right to lecture everyone else. OK they're humbled. UMM people have gotten humbled so far, they now have to fear serious cutbacks in the place. Maybe closure of the place? The new chancellor vows "no." When he has to assert this as such a strong statement, it makes you wonder.
What matters is the attitude of the people at the Twin Cities campus. They always hold all the cards. My late father always understood that. He had a long background with the Twin Cities braintrust.
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| Arden Granger |
Pat Tanner RIP. Arden Granger RIP. Very important names from the heady early days of our campus. Never to be forgotten.
Pat was on my list for my annual Christmas email greetings, greetings which for several years included original songs I wrote and had recorded. She was one of those recipients who'd always respond to that. My heart was warmed. Time passes and we all go through the same passages of life. The conclusion comes the same way for all of us.
God has granted me some extra years of life. Maybe I should say "Dr. Sam" has granted me some extra years of life. Well, they can share on that. Thanks to both.
I look out the picture window facing north at my residence and it looks like a Christmas card on this Saturday morning. It was through this window that I observed 2-3 coyotes recently. A nice illustration of how we're so remote compared to the Twin Cities campus of the U.
Remember the sign at the old HHH Metrodome? "We like it here."
Addendum: Reflecting further on how the very small towns could sometimes beat the big ones in sports - very rarely - I'm reminded of John Candy in an old SCTV skit. He played a boxer, a heavy underdog for a fight. He said "I have to go out there and show all the little people that they have a chance." Then he went out there and got knocked out on the first punch.
Addendum #2: I remember Jim Tanner getting the P.A. announcer microphone for when UMM played in the Northern Sun football showcase at the Metrodome, Minneapolis. This was during the Jim Lind coaching regime. We beat our opponent convincingly. I say "Northern Sun" but maybe we were still the "Northern Intercollegiate Conference." The name became "Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference."
You might suspect what I'll say next: that it's a crying shame the Cougars can't still be Northern Sun. Experts tell me "it can't happen." Well the Hickory Huskers weren't supposed to win it all either. UMM should not take its setbacks sitting down. Today the Cougars play many teams representing oddball schools.
Jim Tanner took over the mic at the Metrodome and said "Welcome to the Metrodome, home of the UMM Cougars!"
In later years I would cover the Chokio-Alberta football team at the Metrodome as it won championships. Today coach Neal Hofland comes to DeToy's Restaurant in the mornings. He loved having his C-A teams run the "toss sweep" play!
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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