Rupp Tourney Helps Halstead Celebrate 100 Years of Basketball

By Karen Jacobs
The Harvey County Independent Staff
Reprinted with Permission

HALSTEAD – This year’s (2006) annual Adolph Rupp Tournament will mark a special anniversary for Halstead High School: its 100th year of basketball. And what better time to celebrate than during Halstead’s 36th mid-season basketball tournament named after Halstead’s basketball icon, Adolph Rupp?

Rupp, the famed University of Kentucky basketball coach known as “The Baron,” grew up in Halstead and graduated in from HHS in 1919. He played ball at University of Kansas under Phog Allen, went to New York and earned a master’s in physical education, and then went to Kentucky, where over 42 years he became the nation’s winningest college coach.

Now this: On Jan. 13, Disney will release a major movie to theaters nationwide, “Glory Road,” about the historic 1966 NCAA basketball championship game in which coach Don Haskins’ all-black lineup at Texas Western upset Rupp’s all-white Kentucky powerhouse.

Rupp’s coaching legend is tainted with racist overtones – many widely believed, some challenged – but in Halstead the hard-driving athlete started out strongly for a program that to this day has won more state championships in its class than any other school.

Records of Rupp’s Halstead playing days were limited due to World War I – and no records at all were found for his junior year. But in the Jan. 16, 1919, edition of The Halstead Independent, one account reports, “Halstead has almost a new team built around Rupp.”

Many game articles credited Rupp for his free throw accuracy and team-leading scoring. Against Newton once, Rupp scored 14 field goals and five free throws – big numbers for the day. One article stated, “Rupp played a strong defensive game and was all over the floor with his opponents.”

The Halstead team went 9-2 that season, losing only to Nickerson, and advanced into the postseason.

Before Rupp

Years before Rupp’s days of basketball glory, Halstead was playing basketball.

In the spring of 1905, Halstead High School began taking part in interscholastic athletics, track first. Prior to this time the high school boys intermittently played football and baseball, but there were no rules or regulations in regard to eligibility of those who participated.

When school started in October 1905, basketball was organized. Practice was started on the court on the school grounds and later moved to City Hall.

At this time, basketball was in its infancy – played with a soccer ball and a net from which the ball had to be retrieved after a basket. The players could not dribble because the rules stated players could not move with the ball.

Beginning in 1910, a player could dribble the ball but could not shoot and dribble. It was not until 1916 that a player could dribble and shoot. It’s all part of Halstead sports history.

The 1905-06 team played seven games, winning three – and at least once played before a crowd reported to be in the hundreds. The first game was against Sedgwick, with Halstead winning 16-8. The next meeting between the teams had Sedgwick winning by the “whopping” score of 6-4. When teams scored 20 points, that was a lot – and they often won.

In the 1905-06 yearbook, the junior class jokingly expressed pride in Joseph Johnson as the best player on the team, saying what other class can boost that all of its boys are fine basketball players? He was the team’s only junior.

Johnson went on to Colorado University and later Kansas State University. There was no mention if he played basketball in college, only that he was expected to do big things in college. He died at the young age of 37 on Jan. 21, 1921.

The second year of basketball proved to be a success for the team as it defeated the strongest teams in central Kansas and never lost on its home floor. Their record that season was 7-3. The players attributed their success to loyal support, friendly feelings among members and management by Superintendent C.O. Smith and Coach McKee.

Championship Tradition

The boys’ first state championship came in 1908 at the first annual basketball tournament at Kansas University. They won it again in 1909, but then waited decades before winning it all in 1944, 1945 and 1952. The next wait for a state championship was even longer – until 2001.

Probably the most outstanding period of Halstead basketball history came in the 1943-44 and 1944-45 seasons. The Dragons won the Mid-Kansas League title for the first time since the formation of the league in 1936. It also marked two perfect seasons in a row for the Dragons as they went 25-0 and 26-0, scoring 994 in the first season and 1,401 points in their second season.

Those teams were blessed with scoring stars.

Harold England led with 415 points the first year and 540 points the next. Jim Benbrook added 200 points the first year and 217 the second year. Benbrook, now a crossing guard for the school district and a resident of Halstead, shot 86 percent on free throws as he made 25 of 29 in the second season. Then there was Tex Smiley, who piled up 161 points in the first season and 298 in the second season.

Although the 1942 team did not go undefeated or win a league title, they scored 892 points in 25 games with Smiley topping the scoring with 372 points.

It was written in the Topeka Daily Capital in 1944 that, “There wasn’t a more impressive club in the tourney than Halstead’s unbeaten class B champions. The Dragons, who rode through the tough Mid-Kansas league untouched in 14 games, looked like a miniature Newton outfit in the ball handling and defense departments. If there were any 25-carat players in any of the three classes, Harold England, the Dragon’s center, was one. His rebounding and ball handling would have earned a front line berth on any five and he counted 27 points for the two night’s work.”

Fred Mendell of the Hutchinson News also commented on the team, saying “Halstead’s Dragons, Class B champions of Kansas, are most entitled to the rating of Kansas’ champions than either the AA or A titlists. Coach Avy Masterson’s boys are the only undefeated team in Kansas. Several of their opponents who have played Class A opposition consider Halstead the strongest team in the state.”

The 1944 and 1945 championship teams remain the only ones to go undefeated in Halstead history. They are also two of only 11 teams in 3A basketball history to go undefeated for a season.

The Lady Dragons

The HHS girls also started playing basketball in 1905, but played only one game with girls of another school, Hutchinson, which defeated them 45-9.

The Halstead IXL and Leader literary societies each had a girls’ team, and they played against each other in two games – with the Leaders winning 36-20 and 15-9. Later the sophomore girls challenged a team of other girls of at school – and lost, 15-8.

No record of HHS girls’ basketball could be found for 1921-23, and the school had no girls team for many more years.

In 1974, the Lady Dragons returned. They have not won a state championship but went to State in 1990 with a 7-14 record and competed in sub-state with a 19-4 record in 1989, both times under Coach Christi Posey.