57 - Right Down The Line

Friday, March 15, 1957
The Daily Reporter
Dover, Ohio



THERE IS STILL SOME CONSOLATION for those basketball fans who have been turned down in their attempts to get tickets for the State Basketball Tournament on March 22nd and 23rd.  It was revealed today that WHBC of Canton will broadcast both the semi-finals and finals of the Class A and Class AA games as well as WVKO of Columbus.  The games were broadcast last year by the same 2 stations.

Jim Muzzy and Bob Krahling of WHCB and Bert Charles of the Columbus station will provide the basket-by-basket account of the 6 games.  Muzzy has been Sportscaster for the past 14 years with WHBC and Krahling has been Muzzy's statistician for the last 4 years.  He has been with the Canton station for 7 years.  Charles, General Manager of the Columbus station, has had many years experience in broadcasting sporting events and is widely known throughout Central Ohio.

BASKETBALL USED TO BE PLAYED more or less under the heading of a gentlemen's agreement.  Or so says Mrs. Nile Johnson of Dundee.  Mrs. Johnson said that way back in 1916 a team was organized in Dundee with charter members consisting of:

Glenn Allison
Adrian Bowker
John Burrell
Myron Haager
Nile Johnson
Russell Lautsenheiser
Ernest Shonk
Clyde Smith

The squad did all of their traveling by train in those days...except for one time when it made the trip to Beach City by sled.  Many of the players lived more than 3 miles from school and had to walk to and from the basketball games.  The Dundee team was outfitted in black shirts with a big orange "D" and cost only 45 cents!  They wore white trunks, coating 35 cents and wool socks with cotton bottoms and costing an astonishing 75 cents per pair!  The players owned only one ball and dressed in the school furnace room and carried their suits in a 25-pound sugar sack.

The main purpose of the referee in those days was to prevent rioting and to bring the ball back to center court after each basket.  Thus, many times coaches took turns at this chore.  No one was benched because of fouls, because calling fouls was unsportsmanlike.

Fans watched the game from the sidelines as there were no bleachers.  When players needed extra nourishment beyond the old water jug, they were sometimes rewarded with ice cream and coffee.  And finally, the first aid kit consisted of only 2 articles.  A bottle of iodine and some cotton dressings.