I was thumbing through some very old photos the other day and came across a photo that will be, for whatever reason, always a keepsake.
It’s a photo of our grade school basketball team at Christ The King School in Oklahoma City. The team was comprised of one seventh and 10 eighth graders and we won the Oklahoma City Catholic Grade School Championship that year.
I was an eighth grader. There are 11 players in the photo along with my dad who an assistant coach and one of the other kids’ dad who was the coach that year. In fact he was the basketball coach from the time I was in the fifth grade until I graduated from eighth grade.
That kid’s name was Frankie Dolf and his dad was our family dentist, Dr. Frank Dolf.
The coach’s small son is also in the photo holding the trophy.
My dad was the assistant from the sixth through the eighth grade.
Both dad and Frankie’s dad were volunteer coaches, of course.
I can still name all the players in that photo, including Terry Hughes, Bill Rice, Michael Dean, Bill Strecker, Tim O’Melia, Steve Muse, Jim Garvey, Greg Blanche, Terry O’Toole, Frankie and myself.
Muse and I were the starting guards, Rice and Dolf were the starters at forward and Dean was the starter at center.
Our team went on to play a Catholic grade school in Tulsa, Holland Hall and they defeated us in the semi-finals in a game at Tulsa.
Of the 11 on the team, 10 graduated from the eighth grade that year. At least five of us, maybe six, went on to Bishop McGuinness High School and graduated together. The others I don’t recall where all they went on to high school.
My dad and Dr. Dolf, who swapped roles during the baseball seasons through the seventh grade, didn’t coach us in baseball our eighth grade year. My dad became too busy with his work for Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. at the time and I don’t recall why Dr. Dolf didn’t coach baseball.
But that same year, 1962, was when we eighth graders went on to also claim the state Catholic baseball championship that spring.
It felt really good to share with a great group of kids a state baseball title that we had worked hard to achieve, especially after winning the Oklahoma City Catholic basketball earlier in the year.
Really have no idea where most of these guys are today except I know Strecker is in the Oklahoma City area because I’ve run into him occasionally, though it’s been awhile.
I know Muse was the manager of a restaurant in Norman for some time also. And Garvey may still be in Ponca City where he resided for a number of years. Blanche became a lawyer.