My run-ins with Kevin McHale

Cloquet and Hibbing, both in northern Minnesota, have had spirited sports encounters over the years, with the Lumberjacks and Bluejackets enjoying memorable and classic confrontations in football, boys hockey, soccer and basketball. The communities are similarly sized, with mostly blue collar residents and energized fans.

When I was a 1971 Cloquet High School senior, the football team played the Bluejackets in what was dubbed the Super Bowl. It pitted Cloquet - the seasonlong Duluth/Zenith/Big Ten Conference champ - against the Iron Range Conference champion. Cloquet won the hard-fought battle 14-8. The next season, 1972, again Cloquet and Hibbing collided for the prep Super Bowl title. There were not, as of then, Minnesota state football playoffs. This time, Hibbing got the best of the 'Jacks, winning 28-7.

In 1976, Cloquet played Hibbing for the Region 7 boys basketball championship title. Cloquet was led by future Nobel Peace Prize winner Jay Shogren - not yet an economist - along with teammates Pete Franz and Tracy Rodd. The Hibbing team's success revolved around their big center, 6-foot-11 Kevin McHale, and guard John Retica. Hibbing won the game and ended up in second place in the subsequent state tournament. After high school, McHale received a basketball scholarship to the University of Minnesota and was a Gophers star. He was a first-round draft choice of the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association. McHale and teammate Larry Bird won NBA

titles in the 1980s. Let it be known, I hate the Celtics - they usually beat my favorite, the Lakers.

Fast forward to July 1995. My kids were in the Cloquet youth basketball program and I was on its board of directors. Big John Calcaterra was the youth organization's president. Tom Brenner was the Cloquet high school boys basketball coach. Somehow, both of them must have had connections to the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves, which then was a fairly new franchise. Hibbing's McHale had retired from playing, and was an executive with the 'Wolves.

Plans called for McHale to come to the CHS gym with other NBA players, coaches and Crunch, the team mascot, and conduct a youth basketball clinic.

More than 100 Cloquet grade-school boys and girls showed up to run drills and practice shooting, passing, dribbling and playing defense. The future Lumberjacks especially liked watching Crunch, whose antic-filled trampoline and aerodynamic show included many slam dunks. McHale and crew signed autographs and had their individual Polaroid pictures - no cell phones yet - taken for posterity. It was a fantastic deal.

In the afternoon there was a five-player golf scramble fundraiser at the Cloquet Country Club, organized by some of us board members, to benefit the youth basketball association. The course was still only nine holes in 1995, but we recruited 18 five-player teams, so 90 individuals. McHale was a good golfer, active at the Mesaba Country Club in Hibbing. His teammates were Jerry Sichting (Timberwolves coach), Dale Race (UMD coach and scratch golfer), and Tom Norman and Ron Witt (also with the Timberwolves).

Cloquet Country Club was my home course. I'd been a CCC member since 1972 and worked on the greens crew summers during high school and college. I had to assemble an all-star lineup to compete with the Hibbing hero and basketball celebrity. I had confidence in our usual at-the-time golf scramble outfit, so figured I needn't recruit internationally, but hoped our team putters would be hot.

Although somewhat of a stretch, I considered this a Cloquet-Hibbing rival match.

Let the record show, the Cloquet team of Rick Stowell, Gary Pastika, Frank Yetka, Jeff Hallback and Steve Korby triumphed with a score of 58. They had straight fairway shots and hot putters. Second place, with a score of 60, went to the local FDL team of Dapper Danielson, Pete Defoe, Dennis Olson, J.R. Abe and Gene Shotley. Coming in third was the highly touted McHale/Hibbing team with a score of 62. Like I mentioned, it was a stretch, but in my mind, it was Cloquet over Hibbing, trees over taconite!

The true winners were all the basketball kids of Cloquet. It was a wonderful event. More than 25 years later, I wonder how many of those participants still have their Polaroid picture of them sitting down with NBA hall of famer McHale and Crunch. (I still have mine.)

Steve Korby's interest in writing goes back to when he was in fourth grade and editor of the Scan-Satellite school newspaper in Scanlon. He welcomes ideas for human interest stories and tales regarding Carlton County residents, projects, history, and plans c/o [email protected].