How the 1969-70 Sterling boys basketball team fulfilled its destiny

Editor’s note: Jeff Metcalfe is a 1971 Sterling High School graduate and 2017 Distinguished Alumni inductee. He was a 1969-70 boys basketball manager and helped to cover that team for the Sterling Gazette. He went on to a 46-year newspaper career as a sportswriter, covering 15 Olympics, and was 2021 National Sports Media Association Arizona Sportswriter of the Year.

If destiny is real in sports then Sterling High School’s 1969-70 boys basketball team was destiny’s child.

Not only was the freshman-sophomore team two years earlier virtually unbeaten at 19-1 and the hottest ticket at Musgrove Fieldhouse outside of a Paul Revere and the Raiders concert in February of 1968, but with the size and talent to project varsity success.

Even the 1967-68 SHS annual was feeling the momentum: “Judging from their fine record this year, it can be predicted that next year’s varsity team will be able to aptly continue Sterling’s steady improvement.”

“We were supposed to be the resurgence of Sterling basketball, the glory days,” said Gordy Fortney, one of the central players from 1967-71. “Guys like John Moore (1961 class) that I watched as a kid growing up. It looked like we were going to be.”

Destiny, though, is always in a bare-knuckle fight with reality for supremacy. Or in this case, whether the Braves (frosh-soph nickname then) would prove to be golden as Warriors.

Fast start before Christmas

Seven of the super frosh-sophs were varsity juniors and seniors opening the 1969-70 season on the day after Thanksgiving against Freeport, featuring still growing 6-5 twins Kim and Kerry Hughes, who would top out at 6-11 in college at Wisconsin (and Kim in the NBA).

For Sterling to dominate the second half in an 80-60 win was destiny’s way of saying knock me off, I dare you. The Warriors were 6-1 through Dec. 20, good enough to excuse an 81-69 loss at DeKalb on the second of back-to-back road games.

“We’re a better team than we showed,” Sterling coach Gene Hall told the DeKalb Daily Chronicle. “I think we are going to be a great team by the end of the year. We’ve got a lot of potential.”

But trouble was brewing even if few knew enough for it to ruin Christmas.

Almost nothing went right at the Pontiac Holiday Tournament where the caliber of 16-team field would not allow for weakness.

Sterling went 1-3, finishing at the bottom of the consolation bracket on New Year’s Eve. As the calendar flipped to a new decade, reality had at least pulled even with destiny and soon would take a significant lead.

There were three more losses, for five straight, including 70-61 at No. 4-ranked Galesburg when even worse news hit the doorstep Jan. 20.

Losing 6-8 center Rick Hines

At 6-8 and one of Sterling’s tallest ever basketball players, Rick Hines was a big piece of the build to the 1969-70 season. With Hines, 6-6 Mark House and 6-4 Fortney, the Warriors had a starting front line that could match up in size with most opponents.

“He gave you size that wasn’t usual at that time,” said Frank Lee, a starting guard. “He wasn’t a stiff. He had some talent to him. He and Mark could feed off of it.”

Hines was off his game during the Pontiac tournament and teammates feared the worst. He played in the first three games of January, scoring 14 against Galesburg in what would be his final game for Sterling.

His transfer to Milledgeville High was announced three days later (Jan. 20) with the explanation that his parents, living in Milledgeville since summer 1969, could not afford a $500 semester tuition fee for Hines to remain at Sterling. There were other personal reasons, but ultimately what mattered was that the reeling Warriors absorbed a reality haymaker at the worst possible time.

They lost 101-65 on Jan. 23 at new No. 4 La Salle-Peru in the first game without Hines. Their seventh consecutive loss came a week later to Newman, 67-66.

The Newman game – followed by a sigh-of-relief win over Morrison on Jan. 31 – for guard Steve Yemm represented destiny’s dim flicker.

“We lost to Newman in a game that we played very well,” Yemm said. “We all came out of it thinking we’re doing better.”

Adjusting to House playing center and other new roles extended the bumps beyond the New-Mor-Rock-Sterling tournament. There were losses to 8-11 Streator and Dixon, which the Warriors crushed 82-59 in December.

Behind the scenes, though, the pressure was being relieved through Sunday get-togethers.

“One of the big influences on us, and I’ll go to my grave on this one, was Bob Galloway,” Lee said. “He would open up Como school for us to come and play. He was very well connected with Mark House and played an instrumental role in his development. We would go out there and have fun, then he’d put burgers or steak on the grill. It brought the joy back to the game a little bit.”

What Lee didn’t know until recently was that Galloway played on Sterling’s state tournament Sweet 16 team, also coached by Gene Hall, in 1949-50, exactly 20 years earlier.

A big score for destiny when it was desperately needed.

Regrouping in time for postseason

Averaging 22 points, House put up 34 on Feb. 13 in an 82-68 home win over Rochelle, which came to the fieldhouse on a five-game win streak.

Starting there, the Warriors closed the regular season with a modest 3-1 run for an uninspiring 11-12 record given preseason expectations. Still, the team vibe was positive starting regional play in March.

“All of a sudden, we started to click,” Fortney said. “Everybody started to do what they were good at. All of a sudden, all those pieces started to fit together. It was kind of like if everybody plays close to their potential and a couple of guys play a little bit above their potential, we might be OK.”

Remember that loss to Newman? The Warriors avenged it, barely, 62-57. Then they completed a season sweep over Rock Falls and dominated Mt. Morris 83-63 in a regional final with House scoring 43.

“Mark House was an incredibly gifted player and definitely the star of the team,” Lee said. “But he didn’t have a star mentality. He was just a great guy in my mind. We were able to convince him that for us to be successful, he needed to be a little more selfish. Getting the ball in hands was a good thing.”

By winning the regional, the Warriors already were ahead of the previous season when as the top seed they lost in a home regional semifinal to Dixon. That team included House, Hines, Fortney, Yemm and talented senior guard Steve Loos, but the reality of a third win over the Dukes proved insurmountable.

The reality for the 1970 team was that winning a regional was not enough to fulfill its destiny. But a sectional semifinal against No. 12-ranked Rockford Auburn, already with 22 wins, almost certainly seemed like the end of the road. In an Associated Press poll, Auburn received 15 of 16 votes to win the sectional, held in Dixon, and Freeport the other.

Auburn had motivation to win for fabled coach Dolph Stanley, in his final season of Rockford public school coaching due to an age restriction. The Silver Fox, though, had no answer for House, who scored 32 in Sterling’s 62-54 upset.

“We took them too lightly,” Stanley admitted post-game to the Belvidere Daily Republican. “If we had played a fair game, we would have won.”

Or maybe Hall had the right explanation: “We won because we play together and are able to complement each other’s abilities. We know our limitations and we know we can be beat. We are a humble team.”

For Sterling and Freeport, the sectional final brought the season full circle, nearly four months after their season opener. For the Pretzels, twisting the first outcome in their direction would be easier without Hines to help defend the Hughes twins.

Freeport led for almost the entire game but not by enough to prevent a twisting fourth quarter culminating with House shooting free throws with three seconds left and Sterling trailing by one.

“I remember getting the ball thrown into me and bringing it up court,” Yemm said. “I was thinking I hope they don’t foul me. Mark came off a pick, and I got the ball to him. Then he got fouled. I was back at the free throw line at the other end of the floor standing next to Frank (Lee). Frank said, ‘We’ve got this.’”

Destiny ruled

House made both attempts, bumping his scoring total to 36. Sterling won 65-64, making the Sweet 16 in what was then a single division state tournament for the first time in 20 years and third ever.

It was a seminal moment for the school and a city of 15,000 fighting for its industrial life.

“We went from being where nobody could even tell you who the team was to being overnight rock stars,” Fortney saod. “Every kid in school sometime between K through 12 should have the opportunity once during that time to be cool. That made us cool. Everybody knew who we were. The town went nuts. Sterling pulled together.”

Lifetime applications

Sterling mayor Jerome Sleeper proclaimed March 14-17 as Sterling Warriors Days.

Blue and gold window paint for stores and cars was in short supply.

No matter that the Warriors’ supersectional opponent, No. 1-ranked and undefeated Lyons, seemed a bridge too far to virtually everyone. They now were playing with so much house money that any outcome short of a massive blowout loss would suffice.

In previous Sweet 16s, Sterling was 1-1 with the victory in 1941 by a 24-win team coached by Hall’s predecessor Curt Brandau, still at SHS in 1970 teaching social studies.

The St. Patrick’s Day game at Northern Illinois University’s Chick Evans Field House in DeKalb drew a standing-room crowd that might or might not have included future Baywatch lifeguard David Hasselhoff, a senior at Lyons. The Lions, with major college players to be Owen Brown (Maryland) and Marcus Washington (Marquette), trailed 11-4 early and Sterling was within three (31-28) in the third quarter.

A 60-42 loss for 16-13 overall did little to dampen enthusiasm for the Warriors achieving their Sweet 16 destiny, particularly since Lyons went on to win state with a 31-0 record.

“We gave them a good game considering they probably should have destroyed us right off the bat,” Fortney said. “We just wore out. We had nothing to be ashamed of.”

Through a 55-year after lens, the surviving 1969-70 players, now in their 70s, are better able to appreciate and articulate their journey that the school is recognizing Sept. 14 with team’s induction into the SHS Athletic Hall of Fame.

House, who played in college for Murray State, died in 2002. He is an individual Hall of Fame inductee.

Lee already is in the Hall of Fame as an individual multi-sport athlete and coach. His 12-year run as Sterling boys basketball coach included a 24-win season and Class AA sectional title in 1989-90. Overall, in Illinois and Colorado, his teams won 601 games.

“There are a number of lessons that are learned from something like that,” Lee said. “When you might not have great years and try to talk to the kids about something positive can happen, stay with it. That sometimes happens, but it’s a rarity. It’s a tribute to our group.”

Yemm will join his niece Christina and namesake nephew Steve in the Hall of Fame. His father William was Sterling High principal for 21 years, including in 1969-70.

“He ate it up,” Yemm said of his dad, who died in 2005. “He understood that stuff doesn’t happen all the time and really enjoyed it.”

Yemm’s 40-plus-year medical career in family practice and sports medicine reflects values learned that magical winter when fittingly for the Warriors roller-coaster ride “Bridge Over Troubled Water” climbed in March to Billboard No. 1.

“There aren’t that many times you’re associated with a team that does that well,” Yemm said. “In medicine, I saw how people handle adversity and success. Our season was a microcosm of that. We had struggles that we turned around. We responded well. There are certain players who are team players and certain ones aren’t. You get enough team players to come together, you can do about anything.

“At that age, we were all pretty naïve so we may not have understood on a certain level at the time. Looking back, you can really appreciate it helped form us all and helped us out in life.”