Plains Folk: Basketball at Cassoday High School
By JIM HOY
© Plains Folk
Cassoday Rural High School was too small (usually from three to four dozen students, from freshman to senior) to field a football team, so we had baseball in the fall, basketball in winter, and track in the spring. The home baseball games were played in the afternoons on an open field with no grandstand, so rarely were there more than a dozen spectators, and because our excuse for a track was just an oval dirt path around the baseball diamond all our meets were away.
Basketball, however, was another story. For a school so small that even I could make the starting lineup (although it took until my senior year to do it, and even then I always was the first player to be substituted for, usually before the first quarter ended), Cassoday fielded competitive teams.
Now the home court/field advantage is a given in any athletic contest, from Little League to the pros, but the Cassoday High School gym was a snake pit. Our basketball court was so short the center circle touched the circles of the free-throw lines. Heavy pads, something like thin mattresses without innersprings, were hung under the baskets so players who crashed into the wall after a lay-up had at least a fighting chance of escaping a concussion or cracked shoulder. Visiting players sometimes would get to thinking about the crash and miss a lay-up.
According to basketball regulations, you have to be out of bounds when throwing the ball in-bounds. On most courts that is no problem, but at Cassoday the line marking the playing court only was a foot away from each wall, so it was pretty easy in the excitement of a game for an opposing player to forget and accidentally have his feet touching the line before he had thrown the ball in-bounds, which meant that we got the ball back.
We, on the other hand, were accustomed to keeping our feet behind the line. The only Cassoday player I remember having much trouble in this regard was Ed Smith who was, for the time, exceptionally tall (something like 6-4, which today would be guard height, but back then made him one of the tallest centers in the county; he also had a wicked hook shot). Ed's feet were proportionate to his height, and they wouldn't fit behind the line unless he turned them sideways, which he occasionally failed to do.
Our biggest home court advantage, however, was the balcony that circled the court on the west, south, and north sides. On the north and south walls, where the baskets were, the balcony went straight up from the playing floor, but on the west side it extended over the court a good couple of feet. Not only that but it was so low even I could jump up and touch it. If the ball hit the balcony, it was whistled out of bounds. Seldom did a Cassoday player throw the ball so it hit the balcony, but visiting players throwing the ball in-bounds, distracted by making sure their feet were behind the line, often hit the underside of the balcony with an in-bounds pass.
Add a competent, competitive coach (Ted Pankratz) and a crowd of raucous, intense fans to the tiny court and narrow out-of-bounds, along with a balcony that usually gave us at least three or four turnovers a game, and it's little wonder Cassoday High had a winning basketball team.
