The enduring impact of a coach

By Mike Brown

EDGERTON -- Most of us living and loving basketball in Northwest Ohio didn’t have the privilege of getting to play for or to personally know the late, great coach Babe Shoup.

He coached, taught and inspired so many student-athletes during his 35 year career at Edgerton High. But what he is best remembered for is the 1959 State Championship Team.

Winning a state basketball championship in Ohio is seemingly an impossible task. The 1959 team won seven consecutive playoff games to ultimately win it all in Columbus. The Bulldogs were underdogs in each contest and every one of the victories were dramatic efforts against what most supposed experts said were superior and taller players.

For anyone thinking that competing in high school sports, and the positive impact of a good coach, are overblown, they are wrong. It is painful to see young boys and girls at small schools frequently decide not to play basketball in favor of specializing in other sports, working too man part-time hours, or sometimes because of just plain lack of focus and bad advice from parents and peers. Basketball is a game that teaches lessons for life.

For me, the Edgerton story brought back enriched memories of 1969 with a coach named Dale Perkins. It seems like only a few years ago and here it is 40 years later that a group of short and scruffy freshman boys in a small Vermont town were learning to become a team, finding creative ways to win and over-achieve, and learn many lessons.

We won a game against a much larger school (Rutland, Vt.) that had four freshman players about six-foot-five. All of our players were less than six-foot.

Coach Perkins was a master at preparing us for games and for beating teams that had more size and individual talent. But he ultimately got a raw deal at our school because ugly politics at schools or in the workplace, left unheeded, can be disastrous. The new superintendent hired a family friend to be the new varsity basketball coach.

We were forever fortunate that Dale Perkins coached us as junior high and freshman athletes in football, basketball and baseball. One of my treasured scrapbook photos is not our team winning a game but our entire team in sweaty practice uniforms standing together for a newspaper photographer. Without prompting, we all pulled in toward coach Perkins in the middle and put our hands on his head and shoulders.

The newspaper man’s caption on that memorable 1969 photo said, “Basketball players shown with their coach, Dale Perkins. It tells just how much the young lads think of their coach, a great deal, it is needless to say. The team has an 11-3 record with two games left and was a pleasant surprise this year. It was said before the season started they would have a bad time picking up any victories.”

Coach Perkins left for a varsity position at another school but the bond with us was so strong that he came back to our high school graduation ceremony. He mailed me a long hand-written salute when he learned I had made the basketball team in college.

Coach Perkins attended my wedding in 1982, as did three teammates from that 1969 team. Some of our teammates also went to his wedding in Cooperstown. Alas, some of us attended his 1991 funeral.

Coaches like Babe Shoup and Dale Perkins teach young athletes how to be confident, creative and team players in life long after high school basketball years.

It made me smile listening to Edgerton star Bob Grundish recall his creative ability to throw the artful behind-the-back passes. Long ago, coach Perkins made me run solo sprints in the middle of practice when I over-did this artful pass. But just like coach Shoup told Grundish, my coach encouraged me to make the pass as long as it went to a teammate for an easy basket.

Shoup taught a creative style of basketball that is missing in much of today’s local basketball action. The 1959 Edgerton team once scored 93 points during an era when there was no three-point line, and yet many local teams now average only about 45 points per game.

When is the last time you watched a local high school player throw a slick behind-the-back pass, or roll across the lane to shoot a hook shot over a taller player, or head fake a defender in the air; then spin the ball off the glass for a layup? Those were common scoring skills “back in the day” but what happened to today’s game?

Grundish and others from the 1959 state champs believe the three-point line that came in about 20 years ago forced the game into a more stationary, less-mobile style. Players now typically run to spots on the floor, with their backs to the basket, and diminish the speed and flow of the game.

Watching black and white tape of the 1959 championship efforts in Columbus, a group of superbly-conditioned Bulldogs ran the floor like dancers in constant motion. Everybody on the starting five was expected to have quality skills to handle the ball, shoot it, pass it, and of course to defend and rebound.

Pick and rolls, double screens for shooters, behind-the-back passes on the fast break, they were staples of the game that are not coached or created very much at all in the modern scheme of today’s high school basketball.

It was a much better game back then in the truly good old days. However, basketball fans then and now sure love a good comeback. Maybe that old style of creativity taught so well by coach Shoup is coming back for the next chapter of local high school basketball.