B-Squad 1955-1956
In the summer of 1986, twenty-six years after Edgerton High School won the Minnesota state basketball championship, Dean Veenhof, the starting center on that Flying Dutchmen team, and his family vacationed in Big Sky country. On the day they visited Yellowstone Park, Veenhof’s wife, Judy, wore a t-shirt bearing the word “Oofta,” an endearing term in Minnesota’s lexicon that caught the attention of a gentleman at the park entrance. He approached Judy Veenhof and politely inquired if she was from Minnesota, a question to which she replied that she was from New York but her husband was raised in the southwestern part of the state.
were Box Office Gold
The man, obviously having Minnesota roots, asked the name of the town and informed that it was Edgerton he smiled, proudly proclaimed that he remembered the Flying Dutchmen’s 1960 championship and reeled off the names of the starting five: Veenhof, Dean Verdoes, Darrell Kreun, LeRoy Graphenteen, and Bob Wiarda. Fame is ephemeral in an era of divisional competition and postseason championships. Since that magical March evening in Williams Arena, where tiny Edgerton High walked away with the state basketball championship, one can safely assume that thousands of teams have earned MSHL titles in all sports. In 2006-7 alone, sixty-six teams earned championship trophies, including four in boys and girls basketball.
Names of the champions generally fade with time, archived only in the trophy cases and newspaper files of the communities they represented, but Edgerton’s legend has continued to resonate through decades. “Whenever I mention that I’m from Edgerton, I simply just pause and wait for the response,” Judy Kreun, high school sweetheart and wife of former Flying Dutchman starting guard Darrell who went on to become one of the state’s most successful high school coaches.
Dutchmen win District 8 title, the
Ending a Forty-year Wait
That the legend survived beyond 1960 is an amazing reality considering that it was a watershed year for sports in Minnesota, professional and amateur. The 1960 U.S. hockey squad, teeming with Minnesota products, surprised the world by defeating the Soviet Union for the Olympic Gold. The University of Minnesota Gopher baseball team won its second College World Series title for the second time in four years. The UofM Golden Gopher football team won its national championship in nearly twenty years. The NBA Minneapolis Lakers pulled stakes and headed west to become the now celebrated Los Angeles Lakers, but about the same time came the announcements that in 1961 the Washington Senators would become the Minnesota Twins and NFL expansion would include a Minnesota team named the Vikings.
Region 2 Champs Enjoy Life
After Defeating Mt. Lake
In “Gopher State Greatness,” a 1984 book chronicling Minnesota high school basketball from 1952 through 1981, author Joel B. Krenz opined that Edgerton “left an imprint on Minnesota basketball that would endure as long as the game is played,” and to date time has validated his claim. Hopkins won back-to-back titles and 65 consecutive games in the early fifties and Edina won an unprecedented three straight championships and compiled a record 69-game winning streak in the mid-sixties. And undefeated Sherburn, population 1,212, only slightly larger than Edgerton won the 1970 title in the state’s final one-class tournament format.
Author Joel Rippel’s book was so enthralled by the Edgerton championship that he included it in his book, 75 Memorable Moments in Minnesota Sports, and when the Minneapolis Tribune did a retrospective on Williams Arena several years ago Edgerton’s triumph was among the banner events in the University of Minnesota arena’s fifty most memorable moments.
To appreciate the Edgerton legend is to understand the history of Minnesota’s one-class system conducted from the inaugural season in 1913 through 1970, a period dominated by teams from the state’s larger communities. Small town underdogs almost always won the fans’ hearts, but only rarely beat teams from Minneapolis, St. Paul, the Twin Cities suburbs, and the larger out-state schools. In the era’s fifty-eight state tournaments, only twenty-one champions represented cities of less than approximately 10,000 residents. Conversely, only eight champions emerged from towns with a population less than 2,000 and Edgerton, was not just the smallest of the lot, it was the only one with two high schools, Edgerton Public and Southwest Christian.
LeRoy Graphenteen had a
Knack for Handling Ball
In the 1959-60 season, Edgerton Public was not the largest school in the Tri-County Conference, District 8 and Region 2, but the Flying Dutchmen – one of 477 schools the entered the postseason – won nine sub-district, district, region and state tournament games to finish its championship run 27-0 in its first state tourney appearance.
Darrell Kreun Threat from
Outside and Driving Lane
Certainly, the fact that Edgerton Public’s enrollment of 94 was the smallest school ever to win a state title gave the legend lasting power, enhanced by the relative ease with which they won all but two games by double digits – a six-point victory over Mountain Lake in the Region 2 championship and an overtime triumph over Richfield (population 45,253) in the state semifinals. The loftiest of highlights in addition to the Richfield victory included easy District 8 decisions over Pipestone (5,234) and Worthington (9,015), a 29-point romp over Mankato (23,797) in the Region 2 semifinals, and the state championship decision over perennial state power Austin (27,908), seeking its fourth state title in its twenty-second appearance in the state high school showcase event.
A couple other factors might have sprinkled stardust on this fairy tale story. The Flying Dutchmen were unlikely champions based on their appearance, a rag-tag group of athletes – occasionally referred to as hayseeds – clad in old uniforms, saggy socks, and worn sneakers. Their dress, however, belied a precision style of play orchestrated by dynamic first-year coach Rich Olson, 23, who looked young enough to be one of the players. The small-town boys played with big-time poise once the game began. They shot with uncanny accuracy from the field and free throw line, played a kinetic brand of defense despite an absence of team depth, and made minimal mistakes. Most important, they each had a role and played it exquisitely.
Veenhof, a 6-foot-5 center, was the team’s leading scorer and received the most attention from the media, but ego never got in the way. Dean Verdoes was the floor leader, an all-purpose player who handled the ball in pressure situations. Kreun and Graphenteen were the outside threats who were lethal from three-point range before the three-point arc was introduced more than twenty-five years later. Wiarda, along with Veenhof, provided muscle inside on both ends of the court and Daryl Stevens, the sixth man, provided stellar inside support when Veenhof encountered foul problems, which was often.
Edgerton's Sharpshooters
also Played Solid Defense
Testimony to the Flying Dutchmen’s seamless teamwork came in the selection of Veenhof, Verdoes, Kreun, and Graphenteen to the all-tournament team – the only time in the event’s history that four players from the same team were ever selected.
Dean Veenhoff - Go-To Man
“You watch them standing on the floor and they don’t look like much,” Mountain Lake coach Mack Nettleton told Minneapolis Tribune columnist Sid Hartman before Mountain Lake lost to Edgerton in the 1960 Region 2 championship game. “Once they start playing they operate like they have been playing in the barnyard since they were able to handle a ball.”
For the Flying Dutchmen, most of whom had been playing basketball since their grade school days, another explanation for their lasting legend was their passion for the game, a passion that resonated throughout Williams Arena and the state during their championship run. That passion also might have a factor in what helped them endure one of their major obstacles, the departure of Ken Kielty and arrival of Olson between the spring and summer of 1959. The players were disappointed to see the soft-spoken Kielty leave after he spent four years building the program, but Olson quickly gained their respect and responded far beyond even the most avid Edgerton fan’s wildest expectations.
But perhaps the best explanation for the legend’s lasting power was that it was that it was the product of a far more innocent era that exists today, an era in which winning was important but not at any cost. In today’s sports world, Cinderella stories are often trumped by reports of multi-million dollar contracts, boorish behavior by athletes and coaches, cheating scandals, drug problems, and brouhahas from the top professional level to Little League baseball. If ever there was a poster team for the spirit of sport, Edgerton’s 1960 Flying Dutchmen qualified.
We won it all!
An hour or so after the presentation ceremony the night Edgerton won the state’s collective heart and broke Austin’s, senior reserve Daryl Stevens slipped out of the team locker room and made his way to the highest tier in Williams Arena, then the nation’s largest college indoor facility. He took a seat and focused on the dimly-lit hardwood floor far below and experienced a bittersweet moment, warmed by the memories of the team’s triumphant journey but saddened by the realization that the majestic journey had come to an end.
Thousands Celebrate Triumph
on Tiny Edgerton's Main Street
What Stevens didn’t understand was that while every season has an end, the special are carried on from generation to generation. The team from tiny Milan that inspired the movie, “Hoosiers” with their 1952 state championship in Indiana had nothing more than a screen writer over Edgerton, a tiny town in southwestern Minnesota that in 1960 provided the state with one of its most memorable sports memories.
Edgerton Honors Legends at
Dutch Festival Parade
during Town's Centennial
