Chapters from "TIME TRIALS"
• 9 •
Upperclassman
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My junior year, the doctor “opened the door” to full-time participation in sports, and the kid charged through with a determination to make up for lost time.
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That year was fulfilling and beyond expectations. We had a new head coach, Fred Suchy, who also served as athletic director. I started at defensive safety in football and saw abundant time on offense, while returning kickoffs and punts. During the opening non-conference game against St. Mary’s High (now Catholic Central) in Burlington, I dashed off tackle for a 40-yard touchdown and returned a punt all the way in the waning moments of a 46 to seven victory.
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The year before, Roger as a freshman had completed an impressive three-sport year being the starting second baseman that spring. When the next fall rolled around, his speed and quickness continued to advance, and he became a first-string running back for Coach Suchy. This was a formidable team of seasoned players with co-captains Bill Ward and Ralph Morello that went six and two with one tie.
Coach Gordon Hennum, Captains Ralph Morello & Bill Ward,
(kneeling) Head Coach Fred Suchy
Starting Eleven 1955 - Sophomore Roger Van #21
Unlike basketball with multiple games and moments, Coach explained, we would remember every down in football. I didn’t, but his goal was obvious and motivational.
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The homecoming game was played in a downpour against Mukwonago who took a 13 to 0 lead. Midway through the 2nd quarter, Rogers bolted up the middle for a 35-yard sprint to the end zone, and the tables turned with a 28 to 13 Elkhorn victory.
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A homecoming tradition was a glowing bonfire on Thursday evening, a day before the game to be played underneath “Friday Night Lights.” The whole week became celebratory, as boys used family trucks to gather firewood. Much of this came from old outhouses that dotted the country landscape.
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When gasoline was poured onto a pile of wood that evening adjacent to the football field, the Elks had their own “Vanities of Bonfire.” Fire Department volunteers stood by with trucks hooked to hydrants to ensure that flames also didn’t take down the wooden bleachers alongside the playing field and homes nearby. As the fire subsided, cheerleaders led students on a “snake dance’ downtown and through the taverns still open.
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The season closed with a thrashing of Lake Geneva on a snowy evening. Early in the 3rd quarter Roger ran our coveted 39-end sweep for ten yards, when he was kicked in the head going down. He staggered off the field with a concussion that ended his night. Coach Suchy put me in for the remainder of the game, saying to step out of bounds rather than turn into tacklers. I heeded the advice, dashed off several nice runs, and helped the Elks’ stout defense to a 26-7 victory.
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One lesson learned from playing football in inclement weather is to get into the game and move vigorously, warming the body. This is the blessing of going two ways—on offense and defense.
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In basketball that winter, I joined seniors Bob Klitzkie, Jerry Share, and Morello in the starting lineup along with classmate Dan Morrow. Roger and fellow sophomore, Jon Platts, were the first reserves off the bench. Coach Suchy, who had joined the faculty as athletic director, also was the basketball coach, and in time the most storied in Elkhorn history. From the opening day of practice, we knew this would be a rewarding experience.
Underclassmen Sophomores Jon Platts #35, Roger Van #21,
and Juniors Dick Van #22, Dan Morrow #25
The coach went back to fundamentals, much as he did in taking over the football team. The game and Elkhorn basketball would never be the same. Early in the season, Suchy scheduled a full scrimmage against Fort Atkinson, one of the state’s best teams led by Coach Kermit “Doc” Weiske and all-state forward Ed Sandvold. With 6’3” Sandvold having his way against our front line, Suchy announced to “Doc” that he was going in to guard his prolific scorer.
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Coach Suchy was 36, two decades older than my 16 years, but he demonstrated what it takes to go up against the best opponents. Our practices and games were memorable. Among individual statistics, the coach kept track of turnovers that detracted from my driving to the basket with abandon for fear of losing the ball. This hindered my aggressive game, but I compensated by developing a competent jump shot.
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Fred Suchy was an intriguing coach, who a year earlier had lost his position at Shawano High School, a comparable size school in the northern region of the state about 40 miles northwest of Green Bay. He injured a player who had smarted off after a game they lost. For this, he was told by school officials that he could still teach but no longer coach. As he related to me during one of our evening conversations near downtown, “I’m a coach foremost,” so Fred departed for Elkhorn as part of a staff housekeeping that took place that year.
We were a solid, though not overwhelming, team that scored an impressive upset over then undefeated Wilmot on their floor in early 1956. At the games’ end, I dramatically punted the basketball skyward that exploded off my foot, shattering several ceiling tiles in the school’s new gymnasium.
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For this misadventure, I was turned into a villain by the Wilmot Panther players and fans that carried over to the following football season. Elkhorn High received a bill for the damage from Wilmot High that EHS principal Jack Refling revealed to the student council, but the school generously paid.
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In retrospect, the incident was an affront to the Wilmot community. At the time, Wilmot had the first of new high school buildings in the Southern Lakes Conference (SLC) and was perhaps the least prosperous with one of the smallest enrollments—under 300 students. Fifty years later it would be 1000 students, as the area benefited from economic development. But not in the 1950s, and the community was rightly proud of its facilities that my misdeed violated.
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The season ended on a down note, as we lost to Delavan for the only time in eight games over my three-year high school basketball career. This was in the consolation final of the Janesville-Beloit Regional Tournament. Nevertheless, I led the Elks in scoring for those three games and had been a perfect 10 for 10 from the charity stripe until midway through the fourth quarter, when my seemingly accurate free throw sat on the front of the rim and dropped off. Moments later, I drove for the basket with a lay-up that likely would have “salted away” a victory but was called for charging and ejected with a fifth foul. As the game went into overtime with me sitting helplessly on the bench, the Comets pulled out a two-point squeaker.
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In the spring, I delivered another blow to Wilmot this time in baseball on an inclement afternoon that forced the game to a makeshift field on the county fairgrounds’ turf. The Panthers’ junior ace, Dick Timmer, had a no hitter into the final inning, when I lined a double into the left-center field gap scoring two runs. This near-disastrous afternoon culminated in a 14-2 loss. Coach John Lawrence discretely thanked me for sparing a deeper humiliation, as we departed the playing field.
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Given regional demographics in the mid-1950s, Wilmot was an athletic powerhouse. It marched through the football season undefeated, had the premier baseball team, and won the conference track title. After losing to the Elks in basketball, it slid to second place behind Burlington but was the only SLC school to make it beyond the regional tournament to the sectionals.
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Despite the team’s mixed performance, I led the Southern Lakes Conference with a .476 batting average and 12 runs batted in over eight games. (My hitting, including non-conference games, was .451.) In mid-season, Coach Lawrence switched me from “clean-up” hitter, fourth in the batting order, to leadoff hitter, so I might come to bat an extra time. This proved fortuitous in the Wilmot game.
RVS Southern Lakes Slugger - 1956
Roger Van Scotter - Sophomore - 1956
To put it in perspective, as a team the Elks batted .224, and half those in the conference were under .200. Only Wilmot had a respectable .276 team average. Pitching can be 70 percent of the game in high school, and Southern Lakes had more than its quota of formidable pitchers.
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That spring the Elks track team was enjoying a bountiful season that would culminate with a trip to the state meet at Camp Randall Stadium on the University of Wisconsin campus. This was the team’s first trip to the state meet in just its third year of existence. Wisconsin has a storied Interscholastic track history that began with the nation’s first state championship in 1895. Milwaukee city high schools dominated the early decades of competition with occasionally a Madison High or other large school interrupting the cream city’s supremacy.
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High schools in Walworth County lagged most areas of the state in track and field. In early decades, an individual athlete might qualify for the state meet, but conference schools did not field teams until the 1950s.
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The first Southern Lakes Conference meet was held my freshman year in 1954. Two of Coach Dahle’s football players, juniors Myron (Mike) Paddock and Richard (Dick) Grimm, convinced him to begin a track program that spring, so as to have a sport to help prepare for the coming football season.
The Walworth County Fair Commission permitted the school to use its odd-shaped auxiliary horse roadway for running events. Harness racing has a rich history at the fairgrounds with its major race card taking place during the late summer fair. Owners and their horses from Chicago’s Maywood, Sportsman, and Balmoral Parks had made the way to Elkhorn each summer since 1898. The long-weekend races draw thousands of fans to the one-half mile track’s classic grandstand.
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A major player in the race events was Pete Langley, Bill’s dad, who also owned a popular downtown restaurant on South Wisconsin Street. Langley was racing secretary at the fairgrounds and served as administrator of the county fair. His older son Phil attended Elkhorn schools until the family moved to Chicago, when dad became a race executive with the three Chicago tracks. After graduating from Dartmouth College, Phil followed in his dad’s shoes or tracks, more than metaphorically, in harness racing.
Harness Racing Walworth County Fairgrounds
Paddock and Grimm did the rest: measuring the track, preparing field event venues in the outer baseball field, constructing hurdles in the shop room, and helping to acquire equipment. Mike (low hurdles and broad jump) and Dick (high hurdles, high jump, and discus) did their best to lead a team of novices. The most impressive performance was that of senior Don Isham, who ran a 4:52 mile, but not fast enough to make it out of the sectional meet. Paddock and Grimm’s resourcefulness was remarkable, but this was a modest beginning that I witnessed from afar on the baseball diamond.
1954 Inaugural Track Team
(Circled Left to Right) Don Isham, Dick Grimm, Mike Paddock, Coach Jon Dahle
Year two saw a few more runners, jumpers, and throwers participate, but the results still were underwhelming. Then, the coach convinced school officials to allow a group of speedsters from the baseball team to compete in the final meet that spring against Palmyra High. Along with participating in several other events, four runners from the baseball diamond—Bill Riese, Jim Platts, Roger, and me—made up the 4x220-yard relay foursome and comfortably set the school record. This also was my only sprint and broad jump victory over the younger brother.
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During the 1955-56, somebody waved a magic wand, and “puff” a select few baseball players were permitted to participate in two spring sports. Other schools complained but recognized the obvious: only the Wilmot Panthers, along with the Elks, had the talent to excel in both spring sports.
1956 - 4 X 220-yard sprint relay
Bill Reese, Rich Van Scotter, Bill Ward, Roger Van Scotter