Metropolitan League coaches doubled as classroom or physical education teachers, began their school years with football practice in early September, jumped into winter basketball, and followed with baseball or track in the spring.
That’s the way it was done at the area’s smaller schools. Year after year.
So it was a little surprising when a line in a story by Charles Byrne of The San Diego Union mentioned that Metro coaches had agreed to halt all basketball activity–no games or practice–following the opening round of league contests Dec. 16 until Jan. 6.
The Christmas holiday and school break meant relaxation but not abstinence. No games, but no practice, too? In the middle of the season? Usually there was some repeat and review a few days before the turn of the calendar and the onset of the most important games.
Perhaps the coaches needed a break from the merry go ’round of Class A and B, and, at some schools, C and D.
There would possibly be an opportunity to make extra money selling Christmas trees or delivering packages for the Post Office. Money was not in abundance. The Great Depression was in its ninth year. War clouds hung over Europe. Many viewed an uncertain future
Basketball could wait, at least for awhile.
CORONADO YES, SAN DIEGO NO
Coronado, which won one Metropolitan League game the previous season, went all the way to the Southern Section playoff Final 4, while San Diego bailed, its chances for a second championship in the last four seasons diminished by midterm graduations.
For the second straight season published reports indicated the Hilltoppers played a short schedule, posting a 7-4 record after 5-3 in 1937-38.
All-Coast League first-team players Glen Walden and Mel Skelley were going to graduate and Skelley would have been sidelined after sustaining a broken nose, compliments of an Alhambra player’s elbow in the regular-season-ending, 28-24 victory.
ASTERISK NEEDED?
San Diego’s Glen Walden was the leading scorer in the Coast League with a 15.1 average for 6 games. Hilltoppers coach Ed Ruffa said Walden had played in 18 games and scored 220 points for a 12.2 average. Seven games, according to Ruffa’s declaration, apparently were played and unreported.
The 7-4 record included Coast League games and the Huntington Beach tournament, plus a 38-18 loss to a team from Consolidated Vultee Aircraft and 32-21 defeat to the San Diego State freshmen.
TOTTERING
The Coast League was on unsteady footing. Alhambra was leaving in June, 1939. Only San Diego, Hoover, and Long Beach Poly were to remain. To keep the league viable, The CIF would the next school year create a schedule partially of opponents from other leagues with wins and losses counting in Coast League standings.
For now, Coast League basketball was limited to two rounds and six games beginning Dec. 2.
The double round-robin schedule would be completed by Jan. 20, at a time when the other San Diego leagues, Metropolitan and Southern, were in the middle of loop action.
KATIE BAR THE DOOR!
“Before a crowd so large that the doors finally had to be closed when no room remained for spectators,” said a local writer, coach Ed Ruffa’s San Diego Hilltoppers opened the season with a double win over Lawrence Carr’s Hoover Cardinals.
The San Diego gymnasium, featuring wide, polished wooden bleachers that seated about 900 persons on the South side, was capable of handling several hundred more, with bleachers in space provided by a second full-length court on the North side of the building.
The Hilltoppers, not expected to contend against favored Long Beach Poly and the Cardinals not expected to contend against anyone, scrapped to a couple close victories, 27-24 in varsity and 26-24 in B.
Poly came south and rolled to a 37-20 lead but the Hillers finished strongly, outscoring the Jackrabbits, 12-4, in the final minutes of a 41-32 loss. That closing finish was a harbinger.
San Diego would not lose to a high school team for the rest of the year. Behind scoring star Glen Walden, Coach Ed Ruffa’s club tied for the league championship with a 34-28 victory on the road at Poly after falling behind, 15-3.
A playoff with the Jackrabbits to determine the Coast League representative in the playoffs was in the works, but with the prospect of playing without Glen Walden and Mel Skelley, San Diego made the decision to withdraw.
Poly went on to claim the Southern Section championship, 29-17 over a Whittier team San Diego had beaten handily six weeks before.
REPEAT NOT PRETTY
Hoover, which was a winless, 0-6 in the Coast, went down hard in the second game with the Hilltoppers.
“Ice hockey tactics stole the show,” said a Union correspondent. Twenty-three fouls were called and the visiting Hillers won the “rough and tumble game”, 39-17, behind Glen Walden’s 20 points. Hoover upset the San Diego B squad, 41-18, and tied for the league title.
CORONADO IN BIG SHOW
Coach Hal Niedermeyer’s Islanders raced to a 6-0 Metropolitan League record and defeated visiting El Centro Central, 32-18, in the first round of the playoffs and gained the semifinals with a 31-18 victory over the Southern League’s Ramona Bulldogs at the Tent City Pavilion.
Host Whittier defeated the Islanders, 39-25, breaking from a 21-21, third-quarter deadlock in the playoff semifinals and Ventura topped the Islanders, 38-30, in the third place game.
BULLDOGS BITTEN
After launching a football program in the fall (2-5 record), coach Charlie Snell turned to his more established Ramona basketball program. The Bulldogs almost ran the table in four divisions. They were undefeated in A, C, and D competition in the Southern League.
The Bulldogs and Vista, each 9-0 in A & B, squared off on the final, regular-season date. Ramona won the A encounter, 42-31, and Vista upset the Bulldogs, 23-22, in B. Ramona and Escondido then clashed for the “mythical lightweight championship of the County” and Escondido topped their visiting neighbor, 35-32.
Ramona’s playoff loss to Coronado was attributed partly to the Bulldogs’ having trouble adapting to the less-than-regulation-size Tent City Pavilion layout.
BOB’S WAY
Coronado’s Bob Carrothers, a national junior champion, led the Islanders to a 23-4 tennis team victory over Point Loma and then traveled to Los Angeles for a tournament, after which Carrothers flew back to San Diego and started the playoff win against Ramona.
Carrothers returned to the tournament the next morning by flying back to Los Angeles.
Maybe it was Carrothers’ presence had encouraged the Metropolitan League to add tennis to the spring sports calendar this year.
TWO-HANDED SET SHOTS
Hoover center Clarence Huddleston was known as “Spindleshanks”, apparently in reference to Huddleston’s skinny legs…Oceanside had the reported highest score for one game in a 53-7 win over Sweetwater…the Pirates’ B team also defeated Grossmont, 52-9…Ramona had a 53-9 win over the San Dieguito Bees…Hoover passed on the Huntington Beach tournament to be part in the first Chino 20-30 Club event…the Cardinals left in the morning for their first game at 3 p.m. and defeated the advertised “vaunted” Chino host, 32-5…they lost to Huntington Beach, 35-33, in overtime the next day…the correct spelling of the Coronado coach’s last name was “Niedermeyer.”…no matter, San Diego Sportswriters continued to spell the name “Neidermeyer… San Diego was runner-up to Ontario Chaffey, losing, 26-22, in its fourth game in three days in finals of the Huntington Beach tournament…the Hillers days before had won a 37-28 league game against Alhambra and then traveled to defeat Whittier, 39-21, and Santa Ana, 38-21….
A Hoover track star from the ‘50s, John Ekberg, was also given the nickname “spindleshanks”. John also starred on the football team and was an All City League hurdler in the spring.
Great note. I know John. Don’t know his brother, Paul, but each was a standout at Hoover in rearly to mid-‘fifties. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a look at John’s legs, which is all the better. He was on his feet a lot when running Old Town Mexican Cafe for Estrada and J.D.