Front: Larry Miller, Ron Otto, Dale Hughes-Capt, David Allen, Alan Twedt, Vernon Olson. Back: Coach Ev Co- chrane, Pete Hadley, Jack Allen, Norman Honderd, Bill Thompson, Bob Jacobson, Art Borton, Duane Brodie. We finished 17-4 with all losses to Roland: three of the losses by just 6 points. We played numerous pick-up games against Story City, Nevada, and other schools, including one of the big schools in Des Moines (Story page 107-8), and won them all.
This was one of the first of a series of fast-breaking, high scoring teams that wore the Milford Twp Red and White in the mid and late fifties. They claim to have scored over a hundred points in three or four games although the official records only show one- Beating Maxwell 107-46. Perhaps the others were in some of the pickup games, one of which they scored 137 points. This may have been a five quarter game to permit more people to play and build endurance. We finished second in the North Story Conference, behind Roland; lost to Roland in the first round of the County Tournament; and captured second in the Sectional Tournament behind Roland- played at McCallsburg.
Dale Hughes writes; We lost the opening game of the County Tournament at Roland to Roland by a score of 69-50 in late Jan of ‘55. Never in my high school basketball experience had I seen a team shoot as well as they did that evening. They finished with almost a 50% field goal average. Their team was ‘feeling good’ and playing relaxed. I think their guards could have drop kicked the ball from the half line and it would have gone in. It was the only time I felt as though our team had been outplayed or beaten. The other three times we lost to Roland that season we should have won. I’ve often thought-- there was something about that Roland Black and Red uniform that ‘psychs’ the opponent out and we were victims of that ‘karma’. I thought then and I still do, that had the Roland lads played against us in, for example, McCallsburg’s uniforms, we’d have beaten them three of the four scheduled games that year. One has to give Roland credit though, as the Black and Red had established a reputation of winning big for a number of years.
