Coach Squinty Hunter and Lewis and Clark had a great basketball season in 1943. With the win over Rogers to close out City League play, the Tigers posted the first undefeated league season by any team since 1935.
George “Jud” Heathcote is a nationally recognized Hall of Fame coach, who first cut his coaching teeth on the high school courts of Spokane. Heathcote, a native of North Dakota, moved to western Washington at a young age after the death of his father.
In the late 1980’s Lewis and Clark and Shadle Park developed a rivalry in girls basketball that established the Greater Spokane League as one of the premiere leagues for that sport in the state of Washington.
With all five starters graduating, Central Valley coach Ray Thacker had to replace his entire starting line-up as the 1961-62 basketball season began. The young men who stepped forward to fill the vacant spots obviously did it extremely well. The Bears finished the regular season...
The 1923-24 basketball season had been a good one for the North Central Indians and their coach, J. Wesley Taylor. Although they lost the city series to the Lewis and Clark Tigers, who had represented Spokane in the State Tournament, NC rebounded the week after...
As we honor Dr. Martin Luther King this week, it brings to mind a little known young black man who took to the hardwood courts of Spokane decades before Dr. King and the fight for civil rights began in earnest. It was 1926, and overt...
The history of Spokane high school basketball would not be complete without mention of Lewis and Clark’s legendary coach, Elra L. “Squinty” Hunter.
The Greater Spokane League has become the premiere league for girls high school basketball over the past quarter century.
Gonzaga High School made some history in 1932. In the six previous seasons of the Spokane City League, only two schools had come away with the city title, Lewis and Clark and North Central. At the beginning of the season, Coach John “Puggy” Hunton wasn’t…
As with football, Spokane high school basketball teams played in no organized league until the Spokane City League was formed in 1925. Prior to that, the results of the annual games between the schools resulted in a “City Champion”. On Jan. 7, 1926, 200 fans…
Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my! It’s interesting to see how the high school mascots of the various schools came to be over the years. It seems many schools -- Mead, West Valley, North Central, Deer Park, Riverside and Cheney among them -- have…
One of Spokane’s first high school athletes to gain national prominence was Ray Flaherty. A multi-sport star at Gonzaga High, he was a member of the school’s first football teams. Briefly, one of his teammates there was a young man by the name of Bing…
There is little doubt that Bill Frazier is one of the first names to come to mind when the greatest local high school coaches are discussed. William Harry Frazier was a native of Moscow, Idaho where he earned all-state honors as a high school athlete…
High school basketball first had a championship tournament in Washington State in 1923. It took another 50 years before an organized system of playoffs was established for football. Before then, state champions were mythical, usually based on poll results. The Spokane area schools first competed…
In 1951, the four members of the Spokane City League -- Gonzaga, Lewis and Clark, North Central and Rogers -- mixed with Walla Walla and Yakima High School (currently Davis) to create the Columbia Basin Conference. The second games of the City League’s round-robin schedule…
With the country less than a year into World War II, the 1942 high school football season started off with the 5th annual Vic Dessert Merry Go Round spectacle at Gonzaga University’s football field. It was an early version of today’s jamborees and 17,000 showed…
In 1959 and 1960, Central Valley and West Valley joined the Spokane City League for football, but weren’t quite ready to compete with the larger city schools. For a few years, CV and WV played an independent schedule, as did Mead, who was graduating from…
In the early days of high school football, you would occasionally see someone lining up sporting a five o’clock shadow and the appearance of last seeing the inside of a classroom sometime a few years in their past. It was enough of problem, the Washington…
The Greater Spokane League will crown two football champions this season with their new 4A and 3A divisional set-up. In the beginnings of high school athletics, there were no classifications by enrollment. Schools scheduled games regardless of the size of their opponent. Some smaller schools…
Many young men and women have gone from the playing fields of high school to serve their country in times of conflict. Some have made the ultimate sacrifice. Archie Buckley was one of those.
Lewis & Clark was having a great football season in 1923. Their record went to 5-0 with a 21-0 win on the road against Walla Walla on Nov. 10. Little did they foresee what that victory would bring.
As the Greater Spokane League begins its 39th season of football competition, it might be interesting to look back at how the teams that make up the league evolved into their present alignment.
High school football in Spokane dates back to the 19th century when the city’s only public high school at that time, Spokane High, first fielded a team. When exactly Spokane High first took to the field is lost in the mists of time, but we…
In 1918 the two Spokane high schools, Lewis & Clark and North Central, were under a school board restriction that only allowed them three football games a year, including the traditional game against one another. Unseen circumstances arose that year to make that shortened schedule…
Vince Grippi's daily take on all things regional sports has been moved to our main sports section online. You can find a collection of these columns here.
