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A page from the past -
August 1972 - Winslow - IU
Remembers Dick Farley
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Dick McQueen, now a school administrator in
Boonville who was Dick Farley's closest friend throughout most of Farley's
37 years, may have hit upon the reason his old Winslow High School teammate
was not given the laurels he won. "He did so many things with
a basketball in a matter-of-fact way that everyone seemed to get used to
it and became an everday happening when he had a big floor game or
defensive games." McQueen says. We knew Dick was good in
high school, but I don't think anyone ever realized how close he was to
achieving greatness until Kentucky's Adolph Rupp came to Winslow one
weekend and Branch McCracken came in the next on recruiting
missions.
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His Winslow
teammates - McQueen, Dick Kinder, Eugene Northerner, big Gary Alley, Bobby
Norrington, Sam Nelson, Jerry Corn, Warren Hurt, Russell Chesser, and
James Klipsch - had a good idea, though, that Farley could do things with
a basketball that no one else could do. Even when he was playing on
Winslow's ram-shackled old home floor - an ancient American Legion building
which was finally condemned in 1949 - with its four pot-bellied stoves
around the the playing area. Farley was a good one.
"That was really something," McQueen
recalled. "We'd have to run from school down the street to the
gym, which was about five minutes away, and then we'd have to wear sweat
suits, caps and gloves until we got warmed up. Then Farley's dad
would come by on his way home from work, stop off at the gym and throw
coal in those stoves.
We had a great coach in Kern McGlothlin and he
believed in playing a good, tough schedule to get ready for the tournament
drive. We played in the Evansville Holiday tournament three years in
a row . . . we played Bosse, Memorial, and Central from Evansville . . .
we even played eight or nine SIAC teams in our "good"
year. The good year McQueen talked about was the 1949 season
when Farley led Winslow went through regular season play without
losing. Jasper's eventual state champions - coached by another Hall
of Famer, Cabby O'Neill - came back from a 10-point deficit at the half to
sideline the Eskimos. That was the same year Winslow had to play all
of its games on the road because that old gym had been condemned.
There's a good deal of conjecture over whether
that 1949 team was Winslow's best-ever or whether it was the 1950
team. That was Farley's senior year and the Eskimos were never
hotter than when they bounced Bosse by 20 points in the holiday
tournament, then came back to win another 20-pointer from the Bulldogs in
the Bloomington semistate.
In that semistate game with Bosse, we hit
everything we threw up there, but it was a complete reversal in the title
game with New Albany . . . they couldn't miss and we were having our
troubles. Paul Poff, who later played with Farley at IU, was hot and
they won by 16 or so points.
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