Team picture in dressing room after sectional
Front row (l-r) Dorrell Johnson, Rex May,
Coach Vosloh, Harold Wright
Back row – Principal Don Pope, Don Padgett,
“Slick” Goodman, Sam Lehman, Charles Fields,
Don Johnson, Frank Mowery and Fred Riggins
To play three high school basketball games in 2 days and score 39 points would be considered a pretty good performance. Posting those numbers and defeating a school three times larger than yours would be monumental. When the victory resulted in the team’s first ever sectional title, the accomplishment is one for the history books.
Norvin “Slick” Goodman was instrumental in giving his team, the Marco Bears, their first sectional title almost seventy-five years ago. Playing in the 10 team Greene County Sectional, Goodman scored 18 points in their Friday afternoon victory over Worthington. In a tough battle with Solsberry the next day, Slick was held to 6 points in a low scoring 37-36 victory. In the championship game, he poured in 15 points and the Bears beat the favored Bloomfield Cardinals 46 to 31. Goodman’s class of 1950 had 14 graduates and Bloomfield graduated 44 seniors.
“We weren’t suppose to beat them,” Norvin told me a few days ago. When I asked him about scoring all those points, he was more interested in telling me about the large number of rebounds he brought down. Unfortunately they didn’t record rebounds in those days much to Goodman’s dismay.
Through the years Slick said he is often asked what he did after such a historic game. He shared with me, “I dried off, put on my clothes, and went home”. At least they cut down the nets! It seems the victories weren’t celebrated like they are today. Norvin and I talked about how one of the Marco cheerleaders went home between the Saturday games and did the afternoon milking. I told Norvin about Joe Null who played for legendary Coach Howard Sharpe at Terre Haute Gerstmeyer and how Joe would get dropped off from the away games at the Chesty Potato Chip plant so he could go to work. Null (who coached basketball in Indiana for many years) said he had a key to the plant. It was a different time.
I asked Slick if he thinks about those magical days. He told me, “Every once in awhile. It was great that we got to do it. (win the only sectional in school history) Everyone remembers that about our class. That is what people talk about when they talk about Marco school.” The school closed in 1958. Norvin’s daughter Carol grew up frequently hearing about the team’s success. ‘It was surprising how much people wanted to talk about it. Dad always enjoyed that,” she recalled. She then went on to say, “He was the best Dad ever.”
That comment brought a warm smile to Norvin’s face. To a father, and an old basketball player, those are the best words ever.
NOTE Mark Buxton Phd did an excelent story on the Marco Bears’ entire 1950 season.
Dr. Mark Buxton is an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He grew up in Warrick County near Tennyson and graduated from Boonville High School in 1981. You can contact Mark at mbuxt2@uis.edu