The days of mania w/ Hancock girls hoops

The self-serving book

High school sports is managed in a way today to tamp down emotions. Much of this has been accomplished by taking away the incentive of small schools to beat the bigger schools. An overall air of civility just seems to be enforced now.
We used to see the P.E. Center at UMM get filled practically to the rafters for post-season games. I was forced to soak in a lot of this due to journalistic obligations. We all acted so exhilarated. The atmosphere actually made me nervous quite often. The hyper emotions seemed misplaced. The Hancock school had a reputation for being rather sports-crazed. There are worse pursuits for consuming our young people, to be sure.
Hancock had a couple coaches who wanted to take on the world, as it were. Their activities were not mere healthy diversions for their students, part of a healthy growing-up experience. "They want to win so bad it hurts," commented a high school peer of mine who worked as assistant coach for a time. My old friend seemed to have his perspective intact, to see the seeds for obsession planted in an otherwise healthy activity.
How could a journalist not share in some of the euphoria? I put on blinders at times and acted quite contented. The Hancock girls basketball team would win in round after round of the post-season. They got attention in our Sun Tribune newspaper by default, I guess you could say, because they'd play beyond when other teams fell. Our Morris team was a non-factor in girls basketball. While the excesses of Hancock were not the preferred model, it was rather head-scratching to see Morris on the sidelines. Isn't it elementary to point out that our population and school enrollment are substantially higher? Just asking this question would make many Motown residents prickly.
As Hancock won in the post-season, the travel commitments for subsequent games would get more demanding. Looking back, I should have asserted hard and fast rules for all my sports travel commitments, applied to all teams: I would travel no more than roughly a half-hour's drive for any game, anytime. One exception would be Alexandria because I could make an Alexandria trip an outing, as so many of us in Morris do. Today that's harder to justify because the shopping mall is basically dead. What to do in Alexandria now?
I am writing about an era when photography was more of an exclusive endeavor, whereas today we see ubiquity of cameras, most of which could probably yield adequate results for a sports event. But Ron Lindquist at the paper once told me that it wasn't enough to simply ensure we had good photos. The parents and fans, Ron told me, wanted someone from the paper to be present. He was right.
Making trips and bestowing attention for a team outside of Morris had its problems. We were the Morris paper, it was constantly asserted, but why couldn't we have a girls basketball program that could climb a little in post-season, instead of being essentially a non-presence?
Hancock's girls basketball coach was Dennis Courneya. Anyone who seeks a case study on the importance of winning in our culture, need look no further than Courneya. His career crashed and burned due to legal troubles. This trouble could have flared up sooner to abort his career. He wore the mantle of hero in the eyes of many, making potential skeptics or accusers hesitant. To this day he probably denies wrongdoing.
I'm reminded of this back and forth by the recent spectacle of Brett Kavanaugh being put severely on the defensive over his confirmation. The circumstances are the same - the nature of the accusations are the same. When the Courneya matter erupted as a legal thing, where sheer winning wasn't going to be an ally any more, there was a subhead with Star Tribune coverage suggesting that rumors of misconduct had been circulating for years. The article had documentation with interviews - there had better be documentation for anything asserted in the headline.
I wondered in a conversation with a well-known Morris main street person, why, if a pattern of misconduct had been noted for some time, it took so long. This person said: "He won." It's a sobering revelation about the importance we place on winning in high school sports.
The incentive used to exist for coaches in a town like Hancock to rise above by outdoing the larger towns in post-season. That temptation was probably a big problem. The High School League has worked over the years firmly to separate the schools and their athletes on the basis of school size. To advance now, you must beat schools your own size, no opportunity to thump your chest over beating a larger school. All things being equal, the big school would win. All things were not equal.
The Hancock girls coach employed a system that I'm sure all area school administrators understood. I can't imagine they'd be ignorant while a mere journalist like me could see what was happening. The Hancock girls program employed an "ugly" style that involved constant running and pressing. This they did even when they got a good lead. Why didn't other teams do it? That's actually a good question. Perhaps the reason was taste: normal coaches wanted to encourage a "civilized" and restrained type of game where you'd pass the ball around and try to get a good shot.
The Hancock girls played post-season games at our P.E. Center in front of crazed packed houses. Roger Clarke's son played his electric guitar while the Owl mascot dashed out in front of all the fandom. What did all this accomplish? What did it prove? I was happy writing the articles at the time because the articles helped fill our sports section, like I said by default. My private thoughts were never that enthused.
It got back to me that the coach had a low opinion of me. Spencer Yohe reported back to me that his colleague's negative assertions about me were "so bad, I won't even repeat them because it would hurt your feelings." What to make of that? I'd rather be in the position I'm in now, rather than in coach Courneya's, the latter having had to serve time in prison. Accusations and denials went back and forth leading up to that, a lot like the recent Kavanaugh circus. Kavanaugh wasn't actually on trial. The Hancock coach was. The legal system turned thumbs down on the man.
He eventually wrote a book seeking to vindicate himself. I assume it was self-published. I have not read it. Reader reviews can be found online. The skeptical reviews seem most credible to me. "If I wouldn't have known better, I would have fallen for everything in the book," one person said. Another writes: "I can't believe the man has swayed so many by writing a self-serving, pity party of a book." This individual concludes by saying "overall, this is a pathetic attempt to regain his 'glory years' from when he was the sports god of a nowhere town in West Central Minnesota."
Hancock's obscurity might have been a reason everyone was so eager to ride on this gravy train of success. Even I have my souvenir sweatshirt still in the basement, bearing the words "Hancock's at state in '88." Cool. It might look a little tight if I pulled it on now.
Morris was never able to quite catch up to Hancock in the years leading up to the High School league putting its foot down with the four-class system.
Yohe coached wrestling and was in the hyper-motivated mold, although his reputation stayed reasonably solid despite a perception of his being a little, well, eccentric. The talking points about Yohe were negative around Morris for a long time, with the spouse of a coach telling me once he's "the biggest creep I've ever seen," but once he finally signed on to coach Morris wrestling, he got a standing ovation at the winter sports banquet, an unusual gesture. Perhaps he was credited with saving our wrestling program.
Yohe was technically a very good coach. But I'm not sure I'd want to be a superintendent or principal at a school where he was coach.
I share all of this as an observer, actually very thankful I never got caught up in the whole sports circus myself as a participant. I didn't experience football head injuries. I didn't experience dramatic and unhealthy weight loss as a wrestler. Of course I didn't have the "talent." Except as a writer. And I am most thankful for that.
The Hancock girls basketball coach thanked Larry Halvorson of the Alexandria paper in his book. I'm honored to have been spared any thanks from that guy. The only excuse I might make for Courneya is that he served in the Vietnam war.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com