Bill Berentsen - 1965

A View from the Players’ Bench, 1965

Academics and sports—lots of sports—were what I did at East High School in the early ‘60s; but I was mostly a varsity basketball spectator—many years from the bleachers and one year from the bench (’65). I had an outside shot, but I couldn’t jump or get up and down the court with much speed. (As my gruff Dad used to say: molasses ran faster than me. Coach Sampson wrapped an ankle for me in fall ’62, took a look at my flat feet, and cut me after practice. Later, football coaches Berney and Enslow told me that I had set the county record for a fully suited-up hundred yard dash—slowest ever.) But I compensated a bit, and coaches McCarty and Barich let me play with the Bombers and coaches Eathorne and Sampson let me stay down as the only junior on the ’64 JV team, a bunch of very good guys who as seniors had a great season (’66). In ‘65 I got all the coaching that the starters got, and playing four days a week on our beautiful court was more fun than another season slipping and sliding at Sheridan Park in city league games. (One rumor was that I was on the East team so there was another footballer to practice against Cal Pharr, who was really good at knocking you around, and he worked on the concussion I had from the football.) So, from the bench that year I watched talented basketballers show me how to play. As Coach indicates, the team started slow and then reeled off quite a few wins. Coach notes examples of some talented (like Pharr, Huguenin), gutsy (Winderl, Slate) and hustling players (Johnston, Fisher) on the team, but he might have also noted the load of fun-loving comics (Berteaux, Fisher, Strachan, Slate). After all that fun at East I played in every imaginable sort of city and university basketball league until I was forty—and then came out of “retirement” a few years ago to help coach grade schoolers. The “trouble” was that the East High coaches taught us Olympics rules basketball. As Coach Eathorne said in his interview on this site, we were taught: no foot dragging, palming, grabbing, push-offs, etc. So, my last city league game was the night I took on a fast break at the foul line and got a full footprint on my thigh and a half print on my chest. Now, who drilled it into us to “take the dribbler”? And, the parents who saw me order the kids around and mutter on the sidelines in recent years called me a throwback to the days when coaches were in charge. Guess who they were, and why I figured a coach ran a team (or a university classroom)? Coaches, thanks for the lessons in basketball, and life. We’ll never forget.
Sincerely, Bill Berentsen ‘65