second place in the conference that first year finishing at eight and two behind Huxley at nine and one.
In March of 1930 twelve Story County High Schools formed a baseball league. These teams included Cambridge, Collins, Colo, Gilbert, Huxley, Kelly, Maxwell, Milford Twp, Roland, Slater, Story City, and Zearing. There were six other high school baseball teams in the county who could compete in a county wide tournament to see who would represent Story County in the state tournament.
By December of 1933 the Consolidated Six was by-passed for the formation of a new league for basketball. Five schools, Gilbert, McCallsburg, Roland, Milford Twp and Zearing became members of the North Story League. Baseball was later added. Fernald later joined and this conference of six teams lasted until the reorganization of schools in the very late `50's and into the `60's. No information has come forth to indicate that Milford's dropping out of the Consolidated Six caused the demise of that conference. Anyway, they picked up another south Story County team and renamed themselves the South Story League. Suspicion is that the distance involved to and from the Milford facility, both for teams and fans, caused pressure to develop for different scheduling arrangements.
Milford had a competitive girls (and boys) basketball team in 1919 or 1920-before the four year high school was established and running. (But after the assembling of the one room schools in SW Sec. 15) Then, sometime in the early thirties, competitive girls' competition disappeared from Milford Twp until the spring of 1944. At this time, one week before the Story County Tournament, the girls played Roland at the Milford facility. This game was before a regularly scheduled double header boys game against another opponent- not Roland. Then the Milford girls played, a week later, in the county tournament against Kelly and lost. Thus was the start, or restart, of girl's competitive sports at Milford Twp.
Why the disappearance has not been established but speculation is that one of the girls, somewhere in north Story County, got seriously hurt and thus girls' competitive sports disappeared from north Story County. South Story County did have competitive athletics during this time frame from 1920 to 1940. Fernald was apparently the first school in north Story County to reestablish girls' competitive sports. Girls at the various schools in the north Story area did have girls' intramural squads (Girls basketball clubs) and some intraschool games were conducted. Roland had interschool competition by the girl's basketball club in 1924. (Played uptown in one of the buildings on the east side of the street-- so it is reported)
Following the Second World War, there was a men's Independent Basketball League which lasted for a few years. This league was composed mostly of alumni of a particular school which played under the title of the school's name independent team. Their schedules and the results of their games were posted in the newspaper and they also had their own tournament. This league evolved into a level of competition in which the name of the school was omitted and the name of the sponsoring unit became the name of the team.
During one of the home basketball games in which we were ahead by a significant amount and the game was winding down, we were on offense and I was under the basket. Our guys out front lost the ball to the opponent, I don't recall who the opponent was and I guess it doesn't matter. Nine of the ten players on the floor rushed towards the opponent's basket. I strolled out to the free throw line just about the time our guards swiped the ball back. The Milford player with the ball looked up court and there I was all alone, lonely and feeling a little guilty because I had not hustled back on “D”.
The Milford player with the ball rifled it to me, I caught it at the free throw line as I was already on the way to the bucket, dribbled the ball one bounce, put my left foot on the wall about five feet high, grabbed the rim with my left hand, and bang! major slam dunk. I hung on the rim for a second or so and dropped to the floor. The audience loved it and howled, laughed and clapped their approval. Two things at that time, slam dunks were illegal because the offensive player had to place his hand in the imaginary cylinder extending above the rim; and the other, when I put my foot on the mat that covered the wall and protected the players to a moderate degree, I was out of bounds. This was probably the first slam-dunk that most people and players had seen in a game and was the only one that I or any of the Milford lads ever preformed during game time.
Anyhow, the refs came charging down the court. One, I thought was going to throw me out of the game,