This article was written by the late Andy Easton featured in Gillespie Area News in 2002, contributed to TheBenGilPost.com by Steve Joyce at the Gillespie Public Library
The decade of 1950’s produced some of the finest basketball teams to ever wear the orange and black for Gillespie High School.
For six of the ten years, the Miners had teams that won twenty or more games in a season. We also won six conference championships and five Macoupin County Tournament titles. Two teams that I would like to feature this week are the 1953-54 and 1954-55 squads.
The players on the 53-54 team were Chuck Baima, “Beaver” Brown, Lynn Hartweger, Bob Knopp, Gary Poole, Terry Sigman, BJ Smith, Jack Whitehouse, Darrell Duncan, Bill Lancaster, and Gene Martin. This team posted a season record of 24-5 with three losses at the hands of Litchfield who happened to import a player named Ron Purcell from Pinkneyville.
Purcell led Pinckneyville to a third-place finish in the state tournament during the 52-53 season and had led Litchfield to state in 53-54 where they lost to Barrinton in the opening round. Our three losses to Litchfield were 70-51, 77-67 and 64-51 in the regional. Who knows what the fate of the Miners might have been if Purcell hadn’t “moved” to Litchfield. Purcell was one of the best all-around players to perform in central Illinois.
“Beaver” Brown, Jack Whitehouse and Gary Poole returned as seniors for the 1954-55 season. Darrell Duncan and Stanley Runta were juniors and they were joined by an outstanding group of sophomores: Gordon Hartweger, Jerry Emmons, Bill Campbell, Larry Clark and Ronnie Price.
The 54-55 team finished the season with a 22-7 record losing to Alton (39-53), Collinsville (57-63), Springfield Cathedral (49-51), Edwardsville (39-53), Mt. Olive (45-47), Patoka (73-87) and Hillsboro in the regional championship 42-66.
We defeated East St. Louis 59-44. The Flyers were rated in the top 10 teams in Illinois at the time and were considered the best team in southwestern Illinois. The Edwardsville Tiger team featured Manny Jackson and Govenor Vaugn. These two great players would lead Edwardsville to a second place finish at the state tourney the following year and then go on to star for three years with the Fighting Illini. Manny Jackson now owns the Harlem Globetrotters.
The loss to Mt. Olive was an upset and enabled the Wildcats to tie us for the conference championship. Hillsboro featured an outstanding sophomore laden team. We beat them 50-48 during the season but they came back to knock us off 42-66 in the regional championship.
This season also marked the last basketball team that Adolph “Chief” Tenikat would coach at Gillespie. In four seasons, Chief’s teams would post records of 29-4, 16-11, 24-5 and 22-7.