Musing over small town basketball - Where in the heck is Dora, Missouri? Or Mountain Lake, Minnesota?
Last year, I posted a blog about "Where in the heck is Zalma, Missouri?" and talked about how much I was learning about Missouri geography by rating all 530+ Missouri State High School Athletic Association boys basketball teams. I would often pull up Google Maps to locate a small town school and found out that Zalma was in SE Missouri.
For those that have not heard of Dora MO boys basketball, you were probably thinking I was talking about Dora the Explorer and not a premier class 1 basketball team that recently beat a top Oklahoma City's Heritage Hall class 4 team by 5. They have one of the top shooters in the country, Isaac Haney, a 6'1" 2021 shooting guard who can put up 30 points faster than you can get popcorn at the concession stand. They also have triplets, Austen, Mason and Bryson Luna, who make up an awesome, albeit small, cadre of superstars in a tiny town R-3 high school that has a one sentence Wikipedia description. But don't take these guys for small town Hoosiers that would wither in the face of competition. They are as good as any team in the state.
For those that have heard of Dora, you might have read about their free throw shenanigans last year (https://www.si.com/high-school-1/2019/01/03/dora-missouri-basketball-triplet-brothers-swap-video) where the triplets switched off taking free throws when one of them was fouled. Dad and coach Rick Luna claimed ignorance of the DNA baiting of referees but, as I reported in another blog last year, coach Luna was doing this back in 7th grade when my grandson's team, The Force, played them in a Big Marc tournament at Parkway Central. I don't repeat this to denigrate the Dora team that is flat out great, but most people who have heard of Dora have probably heard of them because of the free throw controversy. Coach and Dad Luna might want us all to forget this. It will probably never happen again. Refs, check the numbers next time.
Watch out for Dora (https://euro-journal.press/2019-20-winter-preview-dora-boys-basketball/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost). Too bad the MSHSAA league doesn't have a showcase of class champions after the state tournaments.
As I think about Dora and their basketball excellence, I think back to my Mom's hometown of Mountain Lake Minnesota who also were nearly unbeatable in the state of Minnesota back in the early 1900's. They won the 1939 all school Minnesota State tournament over big city school, Minneapolis Marshall, 37-21 and ended up 24-1 (https://www.mnbasketballhub.com/state-champions).
Mountain Lake was a small town of 1800 German Mennonites from Russia that settled in SW Minnesota back in 1875. My great grandfather was a boy of 10 years when they trekked from the Ukraine to Hamburg Germany, took a ship to Philadelphia and boarded a train to Minnesota. There first winter was spent in a dugout sod house on the side of a hill in one of the coldest and snowiest winters in Minnesota history. My Mother didn't learn English until she went to Kindergarten. They spoke Low German, a mixture of German and Dutch, in the home. But the big question is: "What made these immigrants so good at basketball?"
Mountain Lake was runner-up in the first state tournament in Northfield Minnesota in 1913, and again in 1915 and 1917 (https://www.dglobe.com/sports/1383732-blast-past-100-years-high-school-hoops). One Minnesota basketball blogger even went back to figure out that Mountain Lake would have won about a dozen state championships if there had been two classes back in 1913 (https://minnesotahoops.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-if-100th-anniversary-boys-state.html). I thought I was crazy ranking 530 teams in the state of Missouri and this guy is rating teams from a 100 years ago with the same kind of algorithm to see who would be small school champion. You probably think we are both crazy and I wouldn't blame you. Mountain Lake made the state tournament in the 1945-1948 years also. They were in the state tournament 15 times in the first 30 year of its existence.
Mountain Lake doesn't have the same success in basketball today but I noticed that their 9-man football team just won the Minnesota state championship (http://home.mountainlake.k12.mn.us/).
So the $64,000 question is not where Dora is in the state of Missouri but how long can they maintain this excellence. Will it end with the 2021 graduates, Haney and the triplets, or will Coach Luna be able to grow the program into a perennial powerhouse? If you know how good their feeder program is, let me know. I will be curious to see how good they are in 2024 when my grandson's little brother (who is an inch taller than me right now in 8th grade) graduates.
Thanks for reading. Wave, but don't blink, the next time you pass through Dora on Route CC, just 23 miles west of West Plains, through the Devils Backbone Wilderness. Must be a beautiful drive.
For those that have not heard of Dora MO boys basketball, you were probably thinking I was talking about Dora the Explorer and not a premier class 1 basketball team that recently beat a top Oklahoma City's Heritage Hall class 4 team by 5. They have one of the top shooters in the country, Isaac Haney, a 6'1" 2021 shooting guard who can put up 30 points faster than you can get popcorn at the concession stand. They also have triplets, Austen, Mason and Bryson Luna, who make up an awesome, albeit small, cadre of superstars in a tiny town R-3 high school that has a one sentence Wikipedia description. But don't take these guys for small town Hoosiers that would wither in the face of competition. They are as good as any team in the state.
For those that have heard of Dora, you might have read about their free throw shenanigans last year (https://www.si.com/high-school-1/2019/01/03/dora-missouri-basketball-triplet-brothers-swap-video) where the triplets switched off taking free throws when one of them was fouled. Dad and coach Rick Luna claimed ignorance of the DNA baiting of referees but, as I reported in another blog last year, coach Luna was doing this back in 7th grade when my grandson's team, The Force, played them in a Big Marc tournament at Parkway Central. I don't repeat this to denigrate the Dora team that is flat out great, but most people who have heard of Dora have probably heard of them because of the free throw controversy. Coach and Dad Luna might want us all to forget this. It will probably never happen again. Refs, check the numbers next time.
Watch out for Dora (https://euro-journal.press/2019-20-winter-preview-dora-boys-basketball/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost). Too bad the MSHSAA league doesn't have a showcase of class champions after the state tournaments.
As I think about Dora and their basketball excellence, I think back to my Mom's hometown of Mountain Lake Minnesota who also were nearly unbeatable in the state of Minnesota back in the early 1900's. They won the 1939 all school Minnesota State tournament over big city school, Minneapolis Marshall, 37-21 and ended up 24-1 (https://www.mnbasketballhub.com/state-champions).
Mountain Lake was a small town of 1800 German Mennonites from Russia that settled in SW Minnesota back in 1875. My great grandfather was a boy of 10 years when they trekked from the Ukraine to Hamburg Germany, took a ship to Philadelphia and boarded a train to Minnesota. There first winter was spent in a dugout sod house on the side of a hill in one of the coldest and snowiest winters in Minnesota history. My Mother didn't learn English until she went to Kindergarten. They spoke Low German, a mixture of German and Dutch, in the home. But the big question is: "What made these immigrants so good at basketball?"
Mountain Lake was runner-up in the first state tournament in Northfield Minnesota in 1913, and again in 1915 and 1917 (https://www.dglobe.com/sports/1383732-blast-past-100-years-high-school-hoops). One Minnesota basketball blogger even went back to figure out that Mountain Lake would have won about a dozen state championships if there had been two classes back in 1913 (https://minnesotahoops.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-if-100th-anniversary-boys-state.html). I thought I was crazy ranking 530 teams in the state of Missouri and this guy is rating teams from a 100 years ago with the same kind of algorithm to see who would be small school champion. You probably think we are both crazy and I wouldn't blame you. Mountain Lake made the state tournament in the 1945-1948 years also. They were in the state tournament 15 times in the first 30 year of its existence.
Mountain Lake doesn't have the same success in basketball today but I noticed that their 9-man football team just won the Minnesota state championship (http://home.mountainlake.k12.mn.us/).
So the $64,000 question is not where Dora is in the state of Missouri but how long can they maintain this excellence. Will it end with the 2021 graduates, Haney and the triplets, or will Coach Luna be able to grow the program into a perennial powerhouse? If you know how good their feeder program is, let me know. I will be curious to see how good they are in 2024 when my grandson's little brother (who is an inch taller than me right now in 8th grade) graduates.
Thanks for reading. Wave, but don't blink, the next time you pass through Dora on Route CC, just 23 miles west of West Plains, through the Devils Backbone Wilderness. Must be a beautiful drive.
Want to find out where Dora ranks in all classes? See my ratings at https://gramps2020.blogspot.com/2019/12/missouri-boys-all-class-basketball.html missouri-boys-all-class-basketball rankings | |||||||
| Want to learn more about Mountain Lake? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Lake,_Minnesota | |||||||
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