Oscar Hansen

It is that time of year where we are going to a lot of open houses celebrating graduations. I have listened to many warm, funny and nostalgic stories of senior years in high school.

That took me back to my last year of high school, which totally revolved around sports, since that was my total focus at that time in my life.

The Tyler Class of ’68 brings back many memories for me, and I had a bird’s eye view of most of them from the bench. My excuse for not playing much was that I was a 16-year-old senior. I had gone to spring kindergarten, so my folks sent me to first grade as a 4 year old. Not because I was smart, but they wanted to get me out of the house.

My favorite moment in football was scoring my only touchdown against Lynd. It was the only afternoon game we ever played, since Lynd had no lights on their field.

The takeaway here is that I was an afternoon player, since I didn’t do much on the field on Friday nights. I think if we would have had all afternoon games, I may have been All-State.

I also remember playing Hendricks my freshman year and getting beat 51-0. So when we played them again as seniors, we were ahead late in the game, which surprised everyone. But the marvelous all-round athlete for the Huskies, Doug Buller, blocked my punt and they ran it back for the winning touchdown.

I didn’t forgive Doug for that until he married my sister, Linda, nine years later (I may have stiffed them on a wedding present).

On to basketball, and my first thought was not to go out at all. I was sixth man on the B-team as a junior. Three of my classmates were already on the varsity, so my playing time looked limited. But my best friend, Dave Lange, said, “What else are you going to do, sit in the Chat ‘n Chew until practice is over?” Plus, as a senior, you got to go to the state tournament. So I thought, why not?

We played Marshall the first game of the year, and the headlines before the game were “It will be Marshall’s quickness versus Tyler’s height.”

Well, our 6-foot-6 inch center, Norm Christensen, got sick that day. So our coach, Larry Mechtenberg, turned to me and said, “We need a center in the worst way, and you are a center in the worst way, so get out there.”

Well, I scored a whole two points against Mike Culhane, Steve Van Hee, Jim Ahmann, Dave Moran and Drew Kinseth.

The Marshall Independent started its coverage with “Is Marshall that good or is Tyler that bad?”

Well, we weren’t that bad, and we finished with an even record. I even got to start a few more games. I had my best game against Balaton and my future roommate and football and basketball teammate at University of Minnesota-Morris two years later, Pat Popowski.

Now it is tournament time, and we were playing our best basketball. We handled Verdi, and then we beat Tracy, a team we had never beaten before that.

Of course, it helped that their two best players, Rick Stotka and Ron Meyer, had moved to Mankato that year.

Now we had to beat Minneota, a team with only three losses. They had two great guards — Paul Larson and Jerry Teigland. We played really well and upset them.

Now it was down to four teams — us, Marshall, Wood Lake, with their terrific all-around athlete Dave Johnson, and a very good, tall Canby team. The Lancers had a 6-foot-8 inch center, Keith Anderson, with tall forwards in Tom Andert, Jim Winkels and Warren Fritz. They also had two fine guards in Rollie Nevens and Rick Ohlsen, who was also my future teammate at UMM.

We had to play Marshall again, and we all probably played as well as we could play. It was not enough, and they beat us 85-70.

Lee Markell was a reserve on that team, and he became a client and good friend a few years later. I had to remind him that I outscored him 11-0. His wife, Jean, was even quicker to remind me that Marshall won the game.

Spring came, and it was time for my favorite sport, baseball, and my most successful sport, track.

I ran the mile, and in previous years, Bernie Dombek from Ivanhoe had beaten my soundly every year since I was a freshman. But thankfully, he graduated and I finally had a chance to win.

I did win most of the time, and I know that most people thought that I just ran fairly slow for a long time. What they didn’t know that I was actually running as fast as I could, I just had a lot of stamina.

Baseball season was plagued by bad weather, as we only had five games. But one of them was against a really good Ivanhoe team, with Tom Muchlinski and Jim Fier as their battery. As I was flailing away at the plate, Tom hit my bat with a fastball, and the result was the only home run of my career.

It put us in the lead, but thanks to a few walks, a few wild pitches, and a couple of hit batters, I gave back the lead and lost the game for us. Then we lost our first playoff game to Ruthton when Rollie Heidebrink shut us out.

With the spring sports season winding down, I urge all of the athletes who are participating at any level to enjoy what is left of their senior seasons. I hope that you can all look back at your time in high school with fond memories, regardless of what level of success you had.

I am thrilled to say most of the athletes I competed against have either become friends or remained friends over the last 58 years. That means more to me than any wins or losses, and it now makes me wonder why I was so anxious to graduate from high school.

Looking back, it was one of the greatest times of my life, and I hope that most of you who are graduating can have those same great memories in your golden years.

— Oscar Hansen is a correspondent with the Marshall Independent