The first basketball team in Coupeville High School history. (Photo courtesy Megan Hansen/Whidbey News-Times)
It was a different time and a different game.
This Wednesday marks the 100-year (and six-month) anniversary of the first official basketball game in Coupeville High School history.
While CHS became a school in 1900 and graduated its first class (of three seniors) in 1904, the school waited until Jan. 19, 1917 to take an official stab at the game James Naismith invented in 1891.
Coupeville, under the direction of coach J.H. Hallock, blistered visiting Langley 29-7 that day, kicking off an inaugural season in which it went 7-3.
We can’t call them the Wolves, since that name didn’t get attached until years later — yearbooks from the ’20s refer to the school’s teams as the Cards — but they played like a ferocious pack.
According to stories in the Whidbey News-Times, the standout player on the six-player roster was Ed Kennedy, who led CHS to four straight Island County Championships during his playing days.
At a time when the pace of the game was far different from today, and scores were often equally muted, Kennedy would routinely score half of Coupeville’s output.
If you look at the photo above you can get a look at the high-scoring (for the time) center/forward in his later days, when he returned for the opening of Coupeville’s new gym in 1979.
Back in 1917, when Kennedy and his teammates were young lads, they waged war in a new gym of their own, referred to as a “play pavilion.”
Apparently it was so drafty fans kept their coats on while watching games, and the lighting in the joint was courtesy gas lanterns suspended from the ceiling on cables.
The floor was built from planks, and frequently gave players splinters if they were unfortunate enough to come in contact with it.
“I still have scars on my knees from that fir floor,” Kennedy is quoted as saying, while chuckling, in ’79.
Today, in memory of the seven who started our town’s long and successful basketball legacy, we’re doing two things.
One, we’re inducting them into the Coupeville Sports Hall o’ Fame, a chance to be immortalized in an internet world they never imagined.
Inducted, as a team:
Fred Barrett
Altus Custer
Ed Fisher
Ben Gaskill
Clarence Keith
Ed Kennedy
J.H. Hallock (Coach)
And, secondly, by weird coincidence, when the next boys basketball season rolls around, Coupeville is slated to have a home game against Chimacum Jan. 19, 2018.
So, I’m putting the call out to Wolf hoop coaches Brad Sherman and Chris Smith and CHS Athletic Director Willie Smith — we need to mark the moment.
Whether you want to do something big — find the oldest surviving Wolf basketball stars and bring them back for a reunion — or simply put a note in that night’s game program (heck, I’ll write one for you!), we need to celebrate the 101-year anniversary of Coupeville High School basketball.
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