At a time when only one champion prevailed, the Flying Dutchmen of Edgerton – a town of approximately 1,000 residents in southwestern Minnesota – earned legendary status by winning the state’s 1960 high school basketball championship.

They were small-town boys, but demonstrated big-time poise and basketball skills while defeating Chisholm, Richfield, and Austin in cavernous Williams Arena. The Dutchmen, coached by 23-year-old Rich Olson, only two years removed from an outstanding playing career at Macalester College, completed their amazing championship run and a 27-0 season by upending perennial state power Austin 72-61 before a record turnout of 19,018 spectators.

Nearly fifty years later, the mention of Edgerton still can evoke animated discussion about one of Minnesota’s great Cinderella stories in any sport. The names of the Flying Dutchmen starters Dean Veenhof, Dean Verdoes, Darrell Kreun, LeRoy Graphenteen and Bob Wiarda roll easily off the tongues of basketball wags.

Edgerton’s magical season has received occasional mention in newspaper articles and books, but the tale – as compelling as “Hoosiers,” a basketball classic from the courts of Indiana – has never received in-depth attention. Such a narrative is long overdue, so let the tale begin.

- Tom Tomashek

The Flying Dutchmen: Minnesota State H.S. Basketball Champs

I’m not sure which would have been a better movie: “The Hoosiers” or “The Flying Dutchmen.” Yes, “Hoosiers” was a huge success and, surely, a beautiful story about a small town basketball team winning the Indiana State High School Basketball Championship. Well, “The Flying Dutchmen” of Edgerton is the same beautiful story--a different place, Minnesota, a different time, 1960, with different participants.

- Coach Bob Erdman

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While being interviewed by Tom Tomashek for a segment in TOWN BALL, a baseball book which he co-authored with Armand Peterson, I mentioned to Tom that I had taught at Edgerton and he immediately inquired if I had been associated with Edgerton High School's 1960 state basketball championship team.

     I explained that although I was teaching in Minneapolis that school year, I was the head basketball coach at Edgerton for three years prior to the championship season, one in which Coach Rich Olson and the Flying Dutchmen, representing a town of approximately 1,000 residents, fashioned one of Minnesota's all-time sports stories at any level, amateur or professional.

- Coach Ken Kielty

 

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