Hancock girls hoops frustrates MACA

Owls hoot!

The MACA girls basketball team got rather dismantled by Hancock on January 27. Our boys did fine versus Hancock. As for the girls outcome, you should know there is a very long background of Hancock outperforming Morris. My, spanning a great many years. 

In the 1980s, Morris was floundering in the high-profile girls sports of volleyball and basketball. There were signs of hope with the 1987 volleyball season. But much of the funk would continue. And now today, way forward in 2024, my it's a total throwback! 

The Hancock hoops regime of Dennis  Courneya could be subject for a book. Actually he wrote one himself. This was as he tried to resuscitate himself after getting in serious legal trouble. He spent time in prison. But our area's history should never overlook the phenomenon that was his Hancock girls basketball program. This was back when many tournament games of interest were played at our UMM P.E. Center, before so much action shifted to the south of here, mainly to Southwest State. Too far away! But that's the way it is. I don't have to make the trips. I sure wouldn't care to do so much driving at night. 

What could be more convenient for us in Morris than to have games at UMM? 

 

She can be long-range shooting whiz for HHS!

A head-scratcher?

I always thought there was something seriously wrong with Hancock outperforming Morris so noticeably in the major girls sports. I just looked at it from the standpoint of disparity in school and community size. I grew up here and always thought of Hancock as a quite smaller town, charming but smaller. So the odds would suggest our sports teams in Morris could handle Hancock in head-to-head, probably to the extent that such games might be considered scrimmages! 

I settled in with my job at the Morris newspaper. There I began noticing that something just seemed wrong with certain of the Morris programs. And the problems just persisted. I know certain other people saw this. Occasionally I got a hint of that but people were very guarded. I would say this was because of the "Peyton Place" quality of Morris. "You just have to know" certain things. But it was a very difficult pill for me to swallow. 

And eventually I did step over the line some, which must have driven certain defenders of the status quo nuts! They would have wanted the sports writer at the paper to be "in with them." This was after all "Peyton Place." The main power was held by what I'd call the "intelligentsia." They looked down their noses at people with more traditional perceptions. 

Any concern about our co-curricular performance would be met by two very hostile responses:

 

"We don't judge success by wins and losses!"

"Academics comes first!"

Allow me to be blunt in inserting that I don't give a rat's patootie about "academics." A pox on all those people. They have a way of making you feel two feet tall. Like you were ignorant, sort of Neanderthal. Well I certainly am a worldly and informed person. I have a college degree. And I was profoundly puzzled why Morris simply could not do better. 

Girls basketball and volleyball stood out as problem areas. But there was an undercurrent of inattention with Morris extracurricular, or let's just say the commitment was pretty token, lacking the real priorities that needed to be recognized. I mean, people were showing up for work on time. There was a pattern of losing to quite smaller schools. 

  

The watershed moment

Finally I think the community had "had it." This was with a boys basketball loss to Herman in the tournament at UMM. I was there. The leader of the staid established system in the Morris school fought back. Everyone knew he would, like following a script. The truly offensive thing was that the administration higher than him simply allowed him to do it. He should have been escorted off school property as the result of behavior exhibited at a banquet/program. 

But the top administration reflected the flaccid values of the "intelligentsia," a faction that had pretty substantial input from UMM. Today I think a lot of the UMM influence, culturally speaking, is gone. Anyone still working at UMM no doubt is just thankful to have a job. Welcome to the club! I mean, the real world! 

We had a superintendent who obviously could have done more. Let's name-drop: Fred Switzer. He had a reputation of having come to Morris to exercise his special wizardry with finances. He replaced a superintendent who according to legend was too cozy with the local bankers. Ah, there's a million stories in the naked city. 

Good with finances? Was he really so much more brilliant than the norm? I remember that at the time he finally left, a local community leader who was on the same page as me about these things, said "Fred did some good things with money but now it's time to do some other things well." That person's initials were W.A. He's still around.

 

Memorabilia

I still have my old "Hancock's at state in '88" sweatshirt in the basement. I have lost substantial weight so I think I could pull it on again! Should try that. That and my North Stars in the Stanley Cup Finals T-shirt from '91. 

It is important to remember that the Courneya-led Hancock team of 1988 played in the two-class system for tournament basketball. So it was a huge deal that they made state. It would not be the last time. I actually wrote an op-ed piece for the Morris newspaper at the time of the '88 accomplishment, a piece that crossed every conceivable line for community mores. The best way to describe might be to observe that I was like the boy who said the emperor has no clothes. 

The current Owls, a wrecking crew!

I scratched my head, in effect, over how Hancock seemed to be playing at a completely different level than the quite-larger Morris community. And this was not an isolated thing with 1988. The current buzzword might be "systemic." Could anyone have said I was really wrong? Well I don't think so. It's just that I got the "intelligentsia" of the community so mad, words cannot describe. I survived at the paper probably because my family had historical importance with Morris. 

Jim Morrison was always very calm and reasonable when assessing sports. He was never rabid about any of it - quite to the contrary - and maybe this helped. It may have helped from the standpoint that he was not going to get co-opted by the "intelligentsia" or the "clique" that acted like it hovered over co-curricular. What a prickly and ornery bunch that "clique" was. Very much protective of "their own." 

 

Who answers for this?

Morris brought in a girls basketball coach in the mid-1980s who had the creds on paper. It did not work out. I think that situation became a struggle for our school administrator Dennis Rettke, could have shortened his life expectancy due to the stress. He has passed on. We all knew he wanted to do something about the situation earlier than he did. The rumors had legs. 

And surely he wanted the right thing to be done, more so than Switzer would have IMHO. When finally the coach was let go, the newspaper had an odd way of reporting it. Or let's say the school board had an odd way of announcing it. I think I can put it pretty reliably: "The board voted to thank (name withheld) for her service and to tell her that her service would not be required in the future." 

Wow! Would never come upon such wording today. It was a split vote. At first there was supposed to be no vote at all. A friend I had on the school board was upset that the matter was taken off the "consent agenda." It should have stayed on the consent agenda but the "intelligentsia" and the "clique" still wielded too much power, and these miserable souls were able to get through to certain school board members, even Apostolics who don't attend games. 

It was much ado about nothing, because administration should have simply been allowed to make the proper professional judgment, much sooner in fact. And then we all could have simply gotten on with life. But Morris was Peyton Place. And there I sat as someone who simply wanted to assess everything in a reasonable, rational manner. Not in Morris in the 1980s. We had some long-time teachers who thought they owned the place. 

We had married couples on the teaching staff which I think was a problem. "Synergy of relationships." They'd react to me by pointing fingers aggressively. "We don't judge success on wins and losses," and "school is about academics." 

Allow me to repeat: screw "academics." Let the kids have their fun in co-curricular and in my view that includes music and theater. Hey teachers, leave the kids alone. 

Dale Henrich, MACA coach

Today the Morris girls basketball coach is Dale Henrich. I have always liked him even though he has ties with the old clique. He was always nice and considerate with me. But I wonder some about the current program performance, don't you? So we're still underfoot when playing Hancock. Let's be glass-half-full and just compliment Hancock. I have mixed thoughts about that. I think it's time for the Morris program to get the lead out. 

I wonder what ol' Courneya is doing now. What an exciting chapter of Stevens County history that was. Apologists for the Morris system in those bygone times would cite the name of a star player or two with Hancock as if to suggest that Hancock's superiority was always due to special talent. We heard the name Lois Schmidgall for example. I wrote countless articles about the program. 

But credulity got strained big-time with the suggestion that Morris just never had comparable individuals. Because I'm sure we did. We needed proper leadership. I tried pointing this out and had to deal with severe slings and arrows. And if sports is really so secondary as the intelligentsia liked to point out, why did they always act so nervous and concerned when people tried bringing up the issues? Today I think the Morris school is fundamentally run quite well. Better than the City of Morris. UMM is struggling. But the MACA, MBA and MAHACA sports programs are quite the source of legitimate pride. Girls basketball maybe needs a little nudge. 

It's not a "systemic" thing like it used to be. 

 

A dud

As a footnote here, because it just entered my head, let me remind that we had three years with a coach named Steve Harter who I learned didn't even have the background to be a head basketball coach, was very unsuccessful, and was not even a pleasant person to work with. I told the mother of one of the top players about my difficulties with him, and she responded: "Brian, the reason you're having those problems is that he doesn't know anything about what he's doing." 

How could our school have been so clueless? The third year of that coach was when the C-A kids came over. What a shame that things were in shambles. This community is one that needs time to wake up and smell the coffee. Why did our community allow its school to become such a swamp? 

We had a coach here name of Ellen Hanson for one year, was very good, team was competitive. Had a background at U of St. Thomas, as I recall. I worked with her. But she moved on so quickly. Sometimes things do go right. Hey Morris school board, a broken clock is right twice a day! And to hell with the "softball complex."

 

Addendum: Hancock school music gets a big plug this week thanks to Morris newspaper. I don't think of it as Morris-Hancock. The paper is in Morris, the big county seat town. I think of Hancock having its "Hancock Record" for which I once did tons of writing, tons I tell you. 

Morris school parents should not be happy with this week's Morris paper. Is the Hancock music program really so super-duper? Getting praise while reading nothing comparable about Morris? The praise isn't based on any actual awards. It's all just puffy white clouds and puppy dogs. I included the following an an email I sent to Jim Morrison:

I personally heard the Hancock pep band last fall at Big Cat Stadium and I was impressed. And you know what I think the key was? People might not notice this or think about it, they just know if they like the sound. The key was the director herself playing electric bass, really giving a bottom to the sound and pushing the band. Otherwise the band was just typical.

And on page 2 there's another example of the Morris teachers bitching about their pay. You probably know that nothing irritates me more than this. Why is it that when a Morris teacher takes a leave of absence, they always want to come back? I thought they were getting such a raw deal here.

Morris paper is pretty small. And, in terms of the macro picture there is a new burst of articles about legacy media properties struggling and laying people off.

Now Donald Trump is saying publicly that Jerome Powell is "just trying to help Biden" with his decisions. This is serious stuff for someone like Trump to comment so bluntly about the Fed because the Fed is a very, very delicate matter. Normally this type of comment would be off-limits by major political figures, I guess in the spirit of "don't fight the Fed." We know Trump acts like a bull in the China closet, but when will this start to cause serious harm to the country?

On the failed border deal, I think Republicans outside of the Deep South are starting to worry, that the Deep South crazies are defining the party too much. Kevin Cramer was quoted in that vein yesterday. Deep South still wants to win the Civil War.

 

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com