WLM | history
In a time when the draft was taking
more and more men and women
from school, creating a legendary
team seems like a tall order. Player
Tony Katana remembered his and
buddy Earl “Shadow” Ray’s tryouts
as walk-ons. “I graduated from Rock
Springs High School, so I went to
Wyoming on a football scholarship,”
Tony remembers. “Then the war
came on, and they lost a few
basketball players, so there was an
announcement they would have
tryouts for basketball… Shadow
Ray was on a football scholarship so
he and I said, ‘Well let’s go tryout.’
Out of the 15 or 20 boys that tried,
we made the first ten.”
The era was thick with the news
of loss and fears for the future;
interjecting high-intensity sports into
the bleak Wyoming
winter resulted in a
fan frenzy, packing
the Half Acre Gym
(“Hell’s Half Acre”)
to capacity, sending
the overflow to the
nearby Student
Union to sip Cokes
and listen to the
game over the radio.
I appreciated the
emotional pull from
the film, as well as
the tactile way these
interviews recounted life in Wyoming
in the 1930s and 1940s. “These
people we interviewed described how
the soot in the air from the trains
smelled, the ice being loaded on the
trains, the harsh winters,” Kim says.
“It gave you a real sense of the World
War II era in the high country.” In
addition to the players, well-known
Wyoming personalities such as Jim
Brandenburg and Alan K. Simpson
relate tales of the time as well – such
as finding remote radio reception in
the car up near Cody to hear the big
game from Madison Square Gardens.
My favorite part of the team’s
story was that the majority of the
players (all but two, including
Milo Komenich from Indiana)
were Wyoming-bred. Players from
Wyoming included Floyd Volker
and Shadow Ray from Casper; Tony
Katana and Jimmie Reese from
Rock Springs; Lew Roney from
Powell; Jim Collins and Kenny
Sailors from Laramie; and Jim Weir
from Green River High School. A
majority of the players did go on
to serve in World War II. Some
came back to Wyoming to play
after the war, others went on to play
and coach at various places, some
coaching Wyoming high school
teams and cheering on their children
and grandchildren.
All in all, this movie contains
pure Wyoming history, nostalgia,
education as well as an intense
sports story. It’s a study in the
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Wyoming Lifestyle Magazine | Spring 2015