Bob Winter has one of the best overall win percentages of any South Dakota high school coach in history, winning 86 percent of his games. He coached the Yankton boys basketball team in the '60s and ’70s and led the Bucks to a state championship in 1974. Winter then transitioned to being the Yankton girls coach, where he won over 300 games and led the Gazelles to eight state titles in the ’70s and ’80s.
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Our guest today grew up in Wessington Springs, north and west of Mitchell, but who knew our guest would spend 47 years at the same location, about a hundred and 30 miles away in Yankton. Even went to Yankton college, 1963. He's a teacher at Yankton high, and then he never left until he retired in 2010. After 47 years, a teacher, a coach, an administrator, and successful at all three phases, our guest, Bob Winter of Yankton. Bob, welcome to InPlay. You know, you're from Wessington Springs. What did you want to be when you grew up?
Well, this is an interesting deal. How I end up where I'm at. When I grew up, my dad owned a gas station and for reasons I've never quite figured out he got really involved with amateur baseball. And if you look in the 1950s, amateur baseball was here, in Stalls, Aberdeen, Freds, Redfield, Wessington Springs, et cetera. And somehow magically one of the best pictures in the state always worked for my dad at the gas station. And at the same time, a guy named Bernie Buchheim was a picture from Humboldt and a guy named Rollie Greeno became the coach at Wessington Springs. But Rollie Greeno was a heck of a baseball player. Nobody kind of knew about that.
Well, he ended up being one of the all time great coaches. And he was a friend of my family, a little bit through my dad and myself. And he probably along with Gene Nelson, who was the anchor college guy, Bob Brooks that you probably heard of who ended up being a Mitchell coach and administrator. They were all coaches and Wessington Springs. Wessington Springs had hit a streak. Now I see in hindsight where they just had some outstanding coaches. Well that got me interested in being an athletic. So I was an athletic for all my life. Really never thought about too much. One time when I thought about quitting college, my mother said, "What are you going to do, pump gas all your life like your dad?" That kind of took care of that. So I was going to go to Northern believe it or not through Rollie Greeno.
He came down to my dads gas station and he said, "I'm happy you're coming to Northern, but Bob I hate to tell you I don't think you're good enough to play." Well, that kind of deflated me in a hurry, because I also had some cards from Yankton college that said come to us and you can play right away. Well, Doug Cowman had coached at Canistota when they won the class B tournament. And a fellow named Virgil Sandvig who invented Augustana. I went down and visited them. Bob Brooks and Gene Nelson both had gone to Yankton college and they encouraged me to go there and so I did. And that's how ended up a Yankton college a little bit by default.
You know, I don't know anything about your high school athletic career. Were you one of those four sports star athletes for Wessington Springs?
No, I was in every sport that was available every season. I did football, basketball, track and baseball. That's one of the things that today a little bit bothers me. I see this specialization and I think kids are missing out on a lot. It's kind of the way things are going, it's a lot of philosophy involved. But I think I gain from every sport something good that related to life whether it was competition, fairness to play et cetera.
Did you always though wanted to be a teacher as well? Was that I mean, when did that come around?
Pretty much. What happened you go to college, you get a major. Well, my major was good question. So after I was there a while I'd been in athletics all my life, I got into physical education major, but I got into biology and I've always liked biology. And part of that came from my family background of hunting and fishing. So I got into biology I became a biology lab assistant. And the first thing you know, I'm taking education classes, biology major, physical education major.
Well, I had two choices. I could go into wildlife biology or I could go into education. Well, at that time, my girlfriend who became my wife, lived in Yankton, had one year left at Yankton college. That was kind of a no brainer there. So I went into education, because Rollie Greeno's brother Rich Greeno was now the athletic director at Yankton high school. Obviously I knew all the Greeno's and I had worked with the Yankton high school at the time in various capacities. My student taught for a guy named Don Baker. And I ended up taking his place as the head basketball coach at Yankton high school. But they hired me as a science teacher that was my biology background. And as a coach of all sports.
What was it about Yankton college? I mean the Yankton college greyhounds. What was it about that college, because we all know it closed back in the mid eighties. You know your feelings when you saw it close down, eventually become a federal prison. What was that feeling like back in the mid eighties?
Well, first of all, Carl Youngworth was one of the great names of South Dakota sports history, and Yankton college had a great sports tradition along with believe it or not a music tradition. They had a lot of music majors. It was doing very well. Then I ended up being on the board of trustees believe it or not about the time they were about to close. They had had some trouble forever recruiting and then money became an issue. They started heavily recruiting back east.
Well, Yankton college went through a stretch where the vast majority of their students were athletes recruited by the athletic department. Well, what's kind of come to maybe to the forefront. Now colleges are all fighting this, you have to have a student body. You can't just have those people recruited by the athletic coaches. At the time that I was on the trustees. And when Yankton college closed over 72% of the student body for athletic people, well that means where's your history majors, your science majors, your music majors. And so that caused a lot of financial problems. And I was one of three people that voted stay it open, keep it open. It was one of the most upsetting times, obviously of my life.
Sure. Do you have any greyhounds sweatshirts or anything still?
I have a little bit of everything. It's interesting. I was part of the decision making process, but what are we going to do with Yankton college? Yankton college was connected with United church Christ, Doane college in Nebraska is that way. Grinnell college in Iowa, the same thing. These colleges wanted to get all the Yankton college records and just simply move Yankton college and be in Doane or be in Grinnell. Well, I very much opposed that and did a lot of Yankton people.
We had a meeting and decided we are going to keep Yankton college in town. And so we developed a process whereby there was a place that we could hold all the records and the memorabilia because the number of athletic trophies is just phenomenal, primarily track. There was a time when Yankton college was one of the premier track colleges in the Untied States. Today that has evolved to out at the human services center, there's a Mead building. There is one of the gigantic beautiful buildings in South Dakota it's been remodeled. And one of the floors is Yankton college alumni will call it and historical area, but we still keep that under control of Yankton college. They have meetings continually. They have a board of trustees. The records are there. The memorabilia is there. It's really pretty neat deal. And it's going to be part of the big museum now in Yankton on the fourth floor.
1963, it's your first year teaching in over the next 25 years. You coach football, cross country track and field baseball, the swim team and basketball. Sounds like if there was a sport which needed a coach that you were there, Bob Winter. But come on the swim team, did you have to show them how to do the crawl and the backstroke too? I mean, what was that experience like?Bill Bobzin was a football coach over at Yankton college and there was a swim team opening and he took it in the summer and he said, "Bob, I need an assistant with the swim team in the summer." I go, "well, you're kidding me. I don't know anything about swim teams." He says, "It's just like track you run repeats, you have somebody demonstrate the strokes." So, that's what we did and we had a lot of kids. I'd say we had 50, 60 kids on the summer swim team. And it was fun because those kids were really dedicated. They would swim in the morning at six o'clock. They would swim in the afternoon. They'd swim at night. As I watch the Olympic swimmers, I have a lot of respect for them.
So it's 1965, you started coaching boys basketball. You do at nine years, you win one state title. You know, you look at that run to that state title in 74 year runner up the two years prior in 72 and 73, it lost to Miller and to Huron, but then won it all in 74. What were those three years like as the boys basketball coach?
Well, it's interesting. We had nice teams. There were a little bit left over from the era of Don Baker. And in 66 we got defeated by a great Canton team John Eidsness Eidsness. We didn't go to the state in 67. We went to the state and just got nipped by the mill bank team in the semis. We got third then in 67. 68, 69 were rebuilding years. Well in 70, we had a nice big team and we had defeated Lincoln during the year and came to the finals of the state tournament. We got defeated. One of the most upsetting things ever was if I ever thought, if I had a chance to be in the state tournament in a finals, you would win. Well, we didn't win well that didn't sit very good with me. Well then in 70, we had a very nice team. Chad Nelson was our six, 10 freshman center.
And we got upset in the regional over the years. One of the things that I don't know if I like or don't like is how this state has always set up sections and regions. And we were in a region with, believe it or not Mitchell, Winter and Todd county. Mitchell had a nice team. They upset us at the corn palace in 71. And they went on to win the state tournament. Well then in 72 we had a great team. Vermilion high school had a great team. And one of my favorite memories is playing in what they call the armory that you're aware of. That is now the media center at the university, South Dakota.
We played Vermilion high school there, and one in a nail biter, an absolute packed house. They wouldn't let anybody in the gym. Vermilion that played Miller, a real close game.
They end up having an Iverson and a Latterman and the guys that played in college they were good and we had a nice team. Well, then we ran into Miller. I would have to say of all the teams I've ever coached against, Miller was maybe the hardest one ever to guard. They were tremendous for they were kind of ahead of their time. They could shoot long shots drive. They ran what now you almost might be called the passing game and they just were better than us. There was no question about it. Chad Nelson and Mark Hogan were two of our main players and they were sophomores at the time. I remember Dave Strain who became my friend at rapid city central. He told me you don't know what it's like so how well you've done having two sophomores, but I didn't realize at the time. And now in hindsight, I see senior teams win.You can watch all sports. Most of the time senior teams win. Well, Miller was a senior team and hindsight in 1970 Lincoln high school was a senior. We were primarily a senior team. So probably in when we lost in 72, maybe I think the best team won. And now we come to 73. That's a bad memory.
We had been here twice during the year. Huron had a nice team. We had a six center, they had a six named shakes. He ended up playing at Northern. They, were a very, really good team. Well, we got down toward the end and we were ahead and they went ahead and within 10 seconds left, they scored a basket. Bob Judson was their coach. He was my long time friend too. He ended up being a peer. Judson and I talked about this forever. I thought their basket, they scored to go ahead one I thought the guy had traveled.
Well, the referees were a long time refs. Pat Morrison and the guys, oh yes, they were terrific. I mean, they were my friends. Yep. So they called it as they saw it. We had the ball with 10 seconds, went down to try to score probably a coaching error. I hadn't during the year that many times talked about going full court with 10 seconds. Probably because during the year we won too many games. I don't know, but we got down threw the ball away and Huron won, one of the biggest disappointments of my career. Later on Bob Juds and I talked about it. I laughed and he sent me a modified pendent that says almost state tournament champions.
And that was okay with you?
Yeah, but you know you remember saying, Don baker, when I started coaching said, every time I go by Beresford, I think about it. Because Beresford in the fifties, had a fellow named Joe Thorn and they upset Yankton to go to the state tournament when the tournaments were lined up in sections. And he said, "every time I go by the Beresford corner, I remember that." Well, when Canton beat us the 66 to this day, I go by the Canton corner and I remember that. Every time I hear about state tournaments in Huron, I remember that too.
But it's 1974. You got the title. You beat rapid city central. You won by like 19. That game.
Well pretty interesting is during the year we had a terrific team. Most of the team ended up playing in college. Chad Nelson had become one of the great players in South Dakota, heavily recruited, especially by the university of Minnesota. That's kind of a story by itself too. At any rate first game of the year we played Lincoln and we got upset. And I tell you what, it was I don't know to this day, what happened, but might been the best thing ever took the pressure off us. From then on nobody really came close to us. We had a terrific season. I watched these teams now with three point play shots being pretty happy when they score 70, we used to score 70 pretty regularly. We didn't have the three point shot.
Well then we get to the state tournament and state tournaments are tough. We had a couple first tough games, got into the finals against rapid city central Dave Strain being the coach knew was going to be a tough deal. But we played tremendous. We had a great game. We won, everybody was happy. Everybody's telling me, what are you going to do to celebrate? I don't know what all I said, I must have said something wrong because my relatives didn't necessarily like what I said, I think I said, "we're going to go out and celebrate. You know, you got to do that. Don't you?" Anyway. So 74 ended up terrific, terrific year. And I was going to decide what I was going to do.
Well, you left the boys program after that title year and you began to coach the girls. What led you to that decision?
Well, I had turned down a couple college jobs and I wasn't sure I wanted to keep coaching. Sometimes when you have teams, like when I had the great teams, you kind of wonder, are you going to continue? Do you want to keep handling all the stuff that you deal with? I just had to decide what I was going to do for sure.I had some guys that had made me some offers and then the high school started basketball in 1974, the activity association.
And we had a team of girls that played some. And the coach was Sandy Gross who had been a really great athlete for her time at Yankton college. And she was the physical education teacher. So she coached from the first year I think they played like eight or nine games. There was no state tournament. And the next year they were going to have a full schedule, et cetera. And she became pregnant and I was teaching biology. I decided I would still teach for a year to see what's going to happen. And Jack Richardson talked me into taking them in 75. So I said, OK, I'll take them for one year see what's going to happen. Well that one year we won the state tournament 75. And on thing led to another. At the same time for the last five or seven years, I had run basketball camps at Yankton college. And I just decided, well, I'll stay another year or two. And first thing you know, down the road, about 20 some years.
319 wins, only 53 losses, eight state titles, three runner ups, national coach of the year in 1987. But when you look at 1975 and that first year of sanctioned girls basketball in South Dakota, Yankton wins the title four times in the first five years. What were those teams like? Were they ahead of their time at that point in time of other teams?
Well I think some things that were a little bit different. First of all, a lot of those players on those teams had actually had some family members, brothers for example the Barnes girls, who had brothers who had played basketball. So it wasn't as if those girls had never played, and then most of the schools were, I wouldn't use it turmoil or disarray. A lot of schools didn't get started the same as we did. And so it took a lot of schools a period of time, I would say to get caught up. And of the things right off the bat we got going the basketball camps, we got kids playing in the summer and those kids played a lot of hours. And then we had a girl named Donna Ray, for example, move in from Iowa who had played. And so she knew the game well, you get a couple players that are players. We had a girl named Beth Barnes who ended up being a great player at Northern. Laurie Burkhardt did the same thing. So it wasn't that we didn't have players.
And so I look back sometimes I remember in the state championship game I think we made 10 out of 10 free throws with the [inaudible 00:21:07]. So I hear about, well, we have a little trouble shooting better, but well, wait a minute. Part of that might have been the time coaching, how much time kids put into it. The small ball when it came in really made a difference I think.
And we went to Ruth Rehn at the activity association and we were the first state to go to the small ball for girls. And that really, I think, made a lot of difference in the ability to ball handle, easier to shoot, et cetera. So, the seventies' era of girls play kind of changed after that, but I got to tell you an interesting thing that people don't know, Dr. Merritt Auld had been very heavily involved with the activities' association. He was a doctor in Yankton and he had a boy that played when we lost in 70, Kevin Auld who became the orthopedic surgeon for the Seattle Seahawks.
Dr. Merritt Auld told me, we had girls athletics back in the twenties and thirties and forties, and it kind of quit. We had girls basketball. Well I got thinking when I was a kid in Wessington Springs I saw girls play at Artesian and I think Lane, South Dakota. Well then Ginger Larsen coached with me for a long time when we won the state tournaments. And she got her master's degree and did a thesis on women and girls basketball early in South Dakota. And she found out there were a lot of schools that had girls basketball back in started the twenties, thirties, forties. There's a team called American redheads that you never heard of that toured the United States. So it was the fact that there had not been any girls' basketball. It was a fact, get it started again. And title nine was best thing that ever happened to sports in my opinion. I had three daughters. So obviously I was very involved with trying to keep title line going.
We had a school system, Mark Hogan superintendent, Jack Richardson was athletic director who was very supportive of girls athletics. And that became an important feature. How did your school accept girls athletics? Jim Minor was our track coach. I was one of the assistants. We just decided we'll put our boys and girls tracks team together. A lot of schools had separate boys and girls track teams. Well, I think it was the best thing we ever did. I had some great boy hurdlers but I had better girl hurdlers. I mean, so everybody saw things, a little different. A lot of philosophy became involved about that time.
You know, Bobby mentioned some of those girls you had on those teams in the seventies, there is still one record for basketball that's still there it's Diane Hiemstra. Still, the record for the most points in the championship game. She had 34 in that 1979 championship win against rapid city Stevens. What was Diane Hiemstra like?Well, let me tell you about two girls that we had. Diane Hiemstra and Lisa Van Goor. Diane Hiemstra's father was a minister. They moved to Yankton and he called me and said, I have a young girl who's a freshman. And she would like to play basketball and she played a little bit in Iowa. I said, well, I'll meet you over in the gym. It took about 10 seconds to figure out she's better than good. She was tremendous. Even as a freshman. Her background in Iowa had really got her started. The one thing you got to remember Iowa plays six on six or as I call it six on six three on three, whatever you want to call it.
And so she had a little background. But she could shoot a basketball, she had great rhythm. She ended up having two sisters that followed her. Both ended up being all state played in college. Diane Hiemstra would put in what I call the hours you need for success in any sport. She shot baskets, shot baskets, shot baskets. Ultimately she became obviously one of the best players ever in South Dakota.
She went to the university of Oregon who at that time was a premier NCAA girls, basketball power. She had trouble wondering what her major was going to be. A gentleman named Sox Walseth was the basketball coach at Colorado university. He was the men's coach. He quit the men's and took the women's job at Colorado university. His dad was Bus Walseth, who was forever the South Dakota high school activities association director. So we had kind of a connection there. So Diane, we talked to Sox. He was a great guy, he had played for Pierre high school. He was a well known name. So she went out there and played for them. Before she went there she was a, I think junior, senior, freshman in college, she traveled with the junior Olympic basketball team. And then she had a tryout with the Olympic team and she missed the Olympic team by one cut.
They came down to the last day and she, she was like number 20 from number 19 or some version of that. So she was a fabulous player. But more than that, she was a fabulous person. Brilliant, great all around girl. She ended up being a chief engineer in California. She's just terrific and terrific family. But with her, she also helped then develop Lisa Van Goor. Lisa Van Goor was a sixth, two, three girl who was an eighth grader, had never played basketball, came out as a ninth grader. And she started playing basketball with Diane Hiemstra and played and played and played. And she ended up being one of the all time great players at the university of Colorado and played overseas for a number of years professionally.
But those two girls kind of got things started for us at Yankton. That continued, I think literally forever because they could see what putting in time meant it wasn't you put in five hours in the summer, you put in hours every day.
One time when I was running basketball camps, Meadowlark Lemon happen to be in town with the Globetrotters. So I said, Meadowlark would you come and talk to the camp kids? He walked in swinging what I thought was a purse. He said, "I don't see any players here in the stands." And I kind of thought, well, wow, Meadowlark. That's not very good says, "Because I don't see any kids that would play 10 hours a day. And if you go to the city of New York and Chicago, those kids that don't have anything else to do, they play 10 hours a day. That's why the best players are coming from the big cities."
Well, our players remember that Bob Winter, remember that. From that day on, I always made out a sheet. How many hours a day are you going to play? So I think a lot of the success was just back to Hiemstra and Van Goor playing so many hours. Hearing Meadowlark Lemon say, "You better play hours if you're going to be the best." And that just kind of continued on. It's one of my concerns now is we have club sports. The club sports teams appear to me they just like to play putting in hours to them is playing games. I don't know how many hours they put in just plain shooting. Hmm. So it's been quite as I see an evolution of basketball.
Nobody was doing basketball camps back in the sixties, but you started it bob, why were yours so successful? Because they ran for three decades.
Well, I would say a couple things happened. One Jim [inaudible 00:29:03] had been at Yankton College, and had been some experiences in Kansas with camps and he said, you got to get kids playing. So we had some, what we call them day camps come in for a couple hours a day. And it was pretty successful. Then John Eidsness had been in South Dakota state when they had some basketball camps. John Eidsness came to Yankton college as a basketball coach. And he said, let's start basketball camps where we literally put kids here all week long. I thought he was kind of crazy, but we tried it. And it was one of the things that why we got things going. We were about the only ones doing it. South Dakota state did a little bit, couple private ones here in the state were doing it. University did a little bit, but we started having a lot of success with that.
Well then when John Eidsness left, one thing led to another and first thing you know, I was running a lot of camps with a lot of coaches and Jim [inaudible 00:30:07] was a Yankton college. I think the secret to the success of the camps that I ran was the fact that I hired up 15 to 20 area high school coaches a year. So those coaches knew a lot of kids. And I think kids knew if they came to camp we based it on fundamentals. We did not base it on games. So we had fundamental stations all morning. We had kind of, well, I call them team stations, fundamentals in the afternoon. Then we played one game in the afternoon and one game a night. And the fact that they played all day were back to Meadowlark Lemon. You better put in a lot of hours to be good. And then I tried to always find a motivational speaker to talk to the kids about how to, just things about be good people, have a good experience.
Which one stands out?
Marty Gross played for me and the team that lost in 73. He ended up being a coach at Jacksonville, Wichita state. He had played, actually played at Jacksonville. He was in town one summer and he came to town and I asked if he talked to the camp kids. He came to town. I can remember to this day what he did. He looked at them and said, don't let your heads get too big. Treat people, everybody the same. That's kind of the message we tried to get out. I had a couple prisoners come over from Springfield prison. They came in, in their leggings and handcuffs and they talked about don't do drugs and lead a good life. And you coulda heard a pin drop. And those guys walked in with their irons. It was great. Right?
I think we did some things that made kids intrigued with basketball, but also found out, Hey, there's more to life than basketball. You got to be right. Do the right thing. And we had a lot, so many coaches that all helped and it just pretty interesting. A lot of the coaches end up highly successful themselves. I started having some little clinics I call them, at the same time for college credit. And we would have people like Dave Strain, for example, put on a three day clinic. I mean, imagine what he did. So things just pretty went well. I always said I probably played and coached and they were thinking the best of times.
You won 86% of your girls basketball games. And like you mentioned, there is life after basketball. You stepped down in 1991, but it became the athletic, the activities director in 1989. What was the reason for stepping down as the girls coach? Was it your increased time as the activities director?
Yeah, no question. I got talked again into by Moore Hoglan as becoming the activity director when Jack had retired. Well, I really had never had any desire to do that. Moore Hoglan's a great guy. He had played basketball at the university of South Dakota when they won the national tournament. So he knew what was going on. I mean, he's sharp guy. And so he, he talked me into it.
I had to go back, get another degree, for cripes sake, for the university of South Dakota. I really needed more hours didn't I. Anyways so I decided to do that. Well, I coached, I think it was two years or maybe it was three and coached basketball at the same time, did activity director, but just little things. For example, if I had a game out of town and there was going to be a great game in town, I had to have somebody take my place. And it just reached a point where I couldn't do it all. It was just a time consuming thing and I didn't think it was fair to everybody. And so that's why I decided I better just do the activities' director.
What were one of the biggest challenges as activities director at Yankton?
Well, first of all, everything was in pretty good shape because Jack Richardson had hired people and Moore Holgan. And so we had coaches in every position. One of the things definitely at that time was how you going to have equals numbers with title nine. That was coming about, because the football situation, you got a hundred football players and you only got 20 girls in the fall playing basketball. I mean, so one of the things was to equalize numbers. And so over the years we have added gymnastics, tennis, golf, dance, cheer. Now they're going to add softball. It's kind of a never ending story. I think the university of South Dakota's still going on with that because they have a different number of scholarship for men's track versus women's track. Dan Fitzsimmons the coach there was a coach at Yankton high school.
But one of the things that I tried to do, I always felt the coaches need to be encouraged and have a camaraderie. So I tried to have get together once in a while and somehow get uniforms that look the same for coaching. And always the finances is kind of a challenge. One of the best things we ever did was go from the yellow buses to more of a jackrabbit type bus. Safety issue, travel easy... And then one of the challenges started becoming, and I think today there's a lot of philosophy involved with it, which I don't always agree with is scheduling. Your scheduled double A opponents. But as you schedule some A opponents. Yankton and Vermilion, for example, has a history forever of playing each other well for a while, we didn't play each other because of that. Well, today they've gone from schedules to in basketball for example, they play every double A team seated, and that's how you end up getting a way to get into the state tournament. That's a lot different than when we used districts, sections, regions. All of that is scheduling. And then during the time I was with as activities director, you got to remember the Sioux falls, rapid city schools went together. And so you tried to schedule rapid city schools, Sioux falls schools, the SD conference, which I'm very proud of. Scheduling was quite an issue because would you schedule rapid city on a Tuesday night? I don't think so.
And so scheduling was always an issue. We had a lot of meetings on scheduling. Bob Lawry was with the activity association, got to where he helped with football. I think today is that he's totally scheduling football. Well, his successor is so you have financial issues, scheduling issues, and that's never going to go away. One of the things that I see has really evolved though, is the size of schools. When I was at Wessington Springs growing up we were big enough to play Huron in football. Now Wessington Springs goes with about three schools, able to have football. In our ESD conference Huron has dropped down in enrollment, Yankton, who we used to always play with the Sioux falls schools. We're not always scheduled the Sioux falls schools. The situation was Sioux falls is getting so big. And that that whole area around Sioux falls has almost created another league or division. And I think you're going to see over the years, that's going to have a huge effect on what's happening.
Bob I got a couple more for you here on InPlay. You had a bunch of great who I think great activities directors to work with Harvey Hamrick up in Watertown, Gene Brownell in Aberdeen, you got Randy Marso at Brandon valley, Mark Meile Sioux falls, Terry Rotert in Huron, I'm missing a few there, but you know what a great group to work with. I'm sure you guys got along most of the time, didn't you?
Well, we got along all the time because one of the things about the ESD, if you look at the history of the ESD, it goes back as far as any conference in South Dakota and literally the nation. And one of the reasons has been making sure you treat each other fairly. When I first started Yankton, Sioux falls Washington was in the ESD. We beat Sioux falls, Washington, when in I think what year 67 to tie for the conference championship. But then eventually Sioux falls got too big. So we needed to bring somebody in. Well then in came for example, Pierre then came later on Brandon valley. Well, as you bring in new people, you need to get along. If you can't get along, you're going to have some issues.
But part of it is I think you'll take Harvey Hamrick, his background in athletics was fantastic. He was a great player himself. He had gone to South Dakota state. He had refereed, he understood what sports is all about. And so I think most of the larger schools hired activities directors that really had a good background for what they're going to do. And they knew that there's more to winning a conference championship. There's more how your kids going to get along. You're treating others respect. And so if you watch some of that, I have a real tough time. Sometimes I watch some of these college games where they like hate each other. Yeah. That's a bad part of sports. That's evolved. High school kids are doing pretty darn good. I think a lot of that has gone back to as you mentioned, a large group of activity directors that had a really good handle on athletics and what it's all about.
Last one for you, Bob, you are in the South Dakota coaches hall of fame in the South Dakota sports hall of fame. What does that mean to you to be in the hall of fame?
Well, it means I'm pretty lucky that's what I'd say. First of all, I've been very fortunate and the coaches that I've had and then the school administrators I've had, the athletes I've had. People don't get in hall of fames by yourself. I always look at hall of fames as what have you accomplished, but what have you accomplished through people? You know, I've been really lucky to know people like yourself, Jim Burt, some of the great news media people in South Dakota. Well, to me that's hall of fame. Knowing people and understanding that people helped you. You didn't get there by yourself. Sometimes I see hall of fame selections, and I hear the speeches. I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, you better back off a little bit.
Last one. This is the last one. I'm very impressed with the facilities that Yankton has put together with their high schools, with the summit center and Crane-Youngworth Field, the new track down there. I think you should be proud in Yankton for what you guys have done down there for athletics and for the community to be able to participate and watch athletics in Yankton.
Well see, I think that's a history too. The history of Yankton college was crane field, the dash gym. And at one time area teams came in and played in both of them. Well then Yankton high school was in a small facility, then went to what is now known as the middle school. Our gym and the up to the seventies was too little. Well then it came time we had to build facilities that's all there was to it. And so Dr. Joe Gross was a superintendent and we had some school board members who just felt we needed a facility. Every town won't always support all athletic facilities. You probably know that. And so we had had a tough time with votes, trying to get a facility in Yankton. Well, we came up with the idea. I didn't come up with it. These people did. Let's go with the city and build a city school complex.
And what evolved then was a summit center. I got in the middle of raising money for the track. We build a new track. Over the last couple years they've upgraded big time crane Youngworth field. We put in tennis courts and it takes a lot of people raising some money, doing some footwork and getting things done.
I remember I was a kind of a bad guy at the time. I wanted parquet floor, a parquet floor in the main gym. Nobody even knew of a parquet floor. I said, well, look at Boston garden. And I said, we can have three or four or five baskets on every court. Oh boy, I don't know about that. You know, you got to raise money for that. Well yeah, I just got to a hold of some of the old basketball players we had money raised on our end, so you know, we've had money raised and community has put in money and the school board has been very good with it. A fellow named John Stockton and Mike Stevens is a lawyer in town guys like that. You know, if you don't have that, you aren't going to have facilities. Facilities don't happen overnight. And so if anybody ask me what I'm proud of over the years of Yankton, I think the summit center and the facilities is one of the things I like best.
