Somerset High School Basketball

An excerpt on basketball from When Once Destroyed, a letter to my grandson Vern about the life of my dad, also named Vern. When Once Destroyed will be published by Wise Ink Media, Minneapolis in 2025.

The 1935 Somerset High School basketball team lost the sectional final to Wabash 18-15. Back row: Wayne Kinger, Harold Powell, Billy Frank, Bud Jones and Charles Hardacre. Middle row: Truman Miller, Burnell Shroyer, Joe Givens, Vern Shroyer, and Paul Shaw. Front row: Russell Knee, Dean Walfal, and Wayne Younce. The 1932 Somerset team had upset Wabash for the title, 17-15.

Vern’s claim to fame was his success playing basketball from 1931-1935 for Somerset High School in Wabash County. As a freshman, Dad scored four points in a 17-15 upset win over Wabash for the 1932 sectional title. Wabash won the rest of the decade’s titles, including an 18-15 win over Somerset Dad’s senior year, 1935.

Basketball was a big part of life around there. I heard Dad’s cousin Kay Peas tell 1950s Somerset High star Larry Knee, that she remembers her dad, Bob Shroyer, getting so upset watching a Somerset game that he lost his teeth. “It was probably when either you or Wayne were playing,” she told Larry. Wayne was Dad’s youngest brother. “He yelled so much,” Kay said, “he blew out his false teeth, and they hit Guiniverre Garst on the way down.” 

Her sister Janet Schenkel added, “People tried to get ‘em before they stepped on his teeth.” 

Another cousin, Tom Snyder, told me that at one point, neighboring Somerset and LaFontaine had to quit playing. 

"For two years Somerset and LaFontaine could not play basketball together because of fights," Tom told me. "It was too dangerous for them to play each other. The IHSAA (Indiana High School Athletic Association) banned it for two years. Neighbors got into fights. The parents in the towns would get into big brawls and they’d have to send the sheriff’s departments out from either Wabash or Grant County, depending upon where they were playing. It was bitter rivalry."

In the old basement gyms, Tom said,  “They were playing against those concrete walls down there. There were some players thrown into that wall from time to time, supposedly unintentional.”

“At Uncle Charley’s they had a basketball goal on the barn and in the hay loft,” Tom Snyder said. Tom’s Uncle Charley was my grandfather, Vern’s dad. 

Larry Knee, the son of John Knee and Dad's Aunt Vernie, would become the leading scorer in Somerset High School basketball history before he graduated in 1956. Larry remembers playing ball with Vern and his brothers in that hay loft in the winters when it got too cold to play baseball in the farmyard. They were older, men, veterans back home from the Second World War. Larry was born in 1938. 

“The favorite thing I remember,” Larry told me when I visited him in June of 2023, was that, “Every Sunday all of Uncle Charley’s boys would come home. I’d come down because I wanted to be with them. Over the hill in that flat land down there in front of the barn was a ballgame every Sunday in the summer and then in the winter we went in the barn and played basketball.” 

“It was rough,” Larry said. “I was the youngest guy out there, but big for my age. They had no mercy.”

In the hay loft floor there was a hole to throw the straw down through, Larry said. “There was no guard on that. They shoved Mary’s husband Bud and he went down that hole.” Mary was Vern’s younger sister. “It was bedding,” Larry said, “but he never come back up.

“After awhile, Everybody’s saying, ‘You think he’s mad?’

“‘I don’t know.’

‘Whadda you think?'

“We got to looking for him. He’d went to the house. He told somebody, ‘I am never playing ball out there again.’

Bud and Mary’s son, Greg, was the best basketball player among the sons of Dad and his brothers and sisters. Grandpa Shroyer would become a regular at Greg’s games at Windfall High School in Tipton County.  Sports, meaning high school basketball and major league baseball, were always a big deal for us. 

“I remember Uncle Charley had to go to St. Louis all the time to watch baseball,” Tom told me. “Uncle Charley would appreciate you and your son being Cardinal fans. I can remember my dad; he would go over there and come back saying, ‘He’s gonna go in that car and that car isn’t fit to go out of the county. He’s gonna drive all the way to St. Louis in that thing.’ Dad was scared of him going.” 

My understanding is that Pop became a Cardinal fan as a result of growing up in Kansas. Vern named my brother Stan for Stan Musial, the best St. Louis Cardinal baseball player of all time. I envied that name, but it was a burden for Stan. 

Stan heard a story from our Uncle Maurice about our dad’s basketball playing. Maurice played with Dad on the 1932 Somerset team. Maurice told Stan that as Vern stepped to the free throw line with a second or two on the clock and the scored tied at 15 in the 1932 sectional final against Wabash, Maurice heard referee Jesse Cage or Allen Klink say to the other, “This game is over.” 

Vern hit both. 

Game over. 

Then, Maurice told Stan, while the team celebrated with the crowd, Vern said, “Let’s get out of here.” 

There's more to say about what basketball meant to people down around Somerset and I'll provide some more of that in future posts. If you'd like to know more about the book I've written, sign up for a newsletter I'm going to be starting pretty soon by clicking the "join" button at the top of this page.