Basketball at school and on the farm

Basketball has long been a big thing at Pea Ridge, Ark.

I think basketball was invented as a game in 1910, and quickly caught on around the country as an interesting game that could be played indoors or out.

When indoor space was available, basketball was a great game for the colder seasons of the year. We don't know exactly when Pea Ridgers started playing basketball, but it seems certain that it was soon after Pea Ridge High School was formed in the old Pea Ridge College building in 1916 that basketball came to be a game played by the students.

I also don't know exactly the year when Charlie Tetrick began building the structure across the street from the school which kind of became a gym for basketball, but we do have a picture of the 1926 Pea Ridge High School basketball team which was highly successful. The picture shows them in the roofless Tetrick structure with concrete walls and an oak board floor. The backboards were fastened to the concrete walls. I'm sure there weren't a lot of fast breaks taking the players under the basket, at least unless they were OK with crashing into a solid wall.

The old structure was never finished; never had a roof. But it was a place to play basketball.

After the constructing of the new red brick school building in 1930, many of the Pea Ridge folks began wanting to build a "real" gymnasium.

As was rather common in those old days (1931), they just began with what they could do, using volunteer labor and gathering funds and materials as they were able. It took several years to complete the structure, continuing the work as they found resources to do so, but by 1936, Pea Ridge had a real gym. Interestingly, as was also common in those days, they didn't wait to finish the building before beginning to use it.

With only a basic floor, the building began to be used not only for basketball games, but also for roller skating, for music programs and other public gatherings. After the final nice basketball floor was installed (1936, I think), the roller skating stopped. The skates would have been destructive to the floor. But even in 1946, I remember a pile of old skate parts piled against the east side of the building.

The old 1930s school gym was used as a gym and auditorium at least through the 1960s. I think it was in the 1970s that the "new" gym was constructed at what now is called the Intermediate School. I have come to refer to that "new" gym as the "new old gym," and to the old 1930s gym as the "old old gym." When I was in high school at Pea Ridge in the late 1950s, the 1930 gym was "our gym." It served pretty well, only with a few drawbacks. For one, the building was just barely bigger than the basketball court. The "out-of-bounds" lines all around the court were one foot from the walls. So players often crashed into the wall when trying to score on a fast break. We did have thick pads on the walls behind the goals to soften the blow when we crashed into the wall. At least the walls were not bare concrete.

When I was in the earlier high school grades, I usually played on what we called the High School "B" team. The main High School team was the "A" team, although sometimes players might move back and forth between the two or play with both. I remember a game when we had a "B" team game with Farmington, on our home court, and our coach was not there that night. We were playing with our strongest contingent, and we got way ahead of the other team. The referees finally asked us if we shouldn't be doing some substituting since we were so far ahead. We did a little substituting, but not much, and we won the game, 72 to 20. That was great, back then. I'm not too proud of it today.

We had two particularly avid fans when I was on the senior basketball team in the late 1950s.

One was Max Walker, who at the time was THE Pearidge rural mail carrier. Max and his brothers had been strong basketball players back in the 1920s and 1930s. Max had a really strong voice, and you could hear him yell at us above all the crowd. If we did something good, Max let us know. If we did something dumb, Max let us know.

Another great fan was the father of one of our team players, James Harris. James's father, Carmen Harris, often would stand at the edge of the court as we were warming up, and beg the players to let him shoot a ball. Just one shot, he would plead. Some one of us would pass him a ball, and he would shoot a long set shot. Then he would beg to have us let him shoot another -- just one more -- only one more. As long as we would allow him just one more shot, he would shoot and shoot and shoot. Two of Carmen and Betty's sons still live in the community, Eddie Harris and Chuck Harris. I played center on the 1957 PRHS Blackhawks, and James Harris, the older son of Carmen and Betty Harris, was our roving guard. Billy Jo Samuels was one of our forwards, along with Johnny Bone and two or three other guys. Our other guard might be Doyle Smith or my brother Ben Nichols. We had a good year, and were runner-up in the district.

We had a make-shift basketball court at home on our farm, in front of the barn. Our homemade backboard was nailed to the front of the barn.

The hoop was a blacksmith fabricated hoop that we had once used to hold burlap sacks open as we scooped cow feed into them. It wasn't exactly of a regulation diameter, but it was close enough. We didn't have a net, but we didn't worry much about that. We could usually tell if we made a basket or not. We mainly used it to practice our shots. The ground was a bit rough for dribbling. None of us Nichols brothers were great dribblers. We did better with things like passing, rebounding, tipping in missed shots, and playing strong defense. We really loved basketball.

Sometimes it might seem like basketball was the reason we went to high school. No, we believed in getting an education, but it sure was fun playing basketball, if only we could beat Lincoln, or Prairie Grove, or Mountainburg, or Gravette. We used to play in the tournament at Washburn, Mo., every year. Almost always we would lose our first game, then we would come alive and win the consolation bracket. Those were the days!

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Editor's note: This column was originally published Feb. 20, 2008. Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@ centurytel.net , or call 621-1621.