Roger Nelson
ROGER NELSON
From First Person, Legendary South Dakota Sports Stories, by Mike Henriksen, copyright, Mariah Press, 2018
Mike Henriksen: Roger Nelson joins us. Roger, thanks so much for the time.
Roger Nelson: You betcha.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, let’s go back to the beginning. You are a Brookings native, correct?
Roger Nelson: Right. I actually was born in Arlington but moved to Brookings in 1945 in the third grade.
Mike Henriksen: You had quite the athletic career at Brookings.
Roger Nelson: There are things that you tell people and they don’t believe. They don’t believe the old narrow lane. They don’t believe the V on one side the free throw line and the H on the other.
Mike Henriksen: What was that for?
Roger Nelson: That was the person shooting the free throw. The visiting team would get to be right underneath the basket on the V and the home team or the person shooting the free throw would be standing on the H. Of course the lane was narrow. When they called time out or the end of a quarter, you didn’t get to go over and talk to your coach. They had a little roller skating deal like box that they’d slide out to the free throw line with a towel and a little bit of water in it. That’s how they refreshed themselves. People don’t believe that.
Mike Henriksen: There was probably times when it was just as well you weren’t seeing the coach during the quarter break, wasn’t it?
Roger Nelson: That must have been the reason.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, you took part in every sport at Brookings High School, didn’t you?
Roger Nelson: Yes, I did.
Mike Henriksen: Then a little baseball in the summer?
Roger Nelson: Oh yes. Just about everybody did that.
Mike Henriksen: Was there ever any thought that you wouldn’t be involved in everything, Roger?
Roger Nelson: No, my parents really backed me up on all the athletics that I wanted to go into. Of course when I moved to town everything was new. The only thing I knew anything about was softball in a country school. Then you move to a town the size of Brookings. You know, there were 12 kids in our country school and you move to a town where there’s 30 kids in your room and 90 in your class so it made a lot of difference. You kind of stood by and watched people do this and you decided, well, I’m going to try it.
Mike Henriksen: Did you come from an athletic family? You mentioned your parents were supportive, but had they been involved in athletics at all?
Roger Nelson: No. Only in baseball or softball.
Mike Henriksen: So this was kind of a learning experience for them too.
Roger Nelson: Oh yes. Very much.
Mike Henriksen: Tell us about your basketball high school career.
Roger Nelson: As a freshman, I played B Team for about four or five games and then the coach moved me up to the A Team. I was a substitute for the majority of the games, but I did start six games as a freshman. We did win the ESD Conference that year. We went to the state tournament, and got beat by Sturgis by two points in the semifinals and then they won the state that year.
Mike Henriksen: Wow.
Roger Nelson: We only lost two seniors from that team and we had pretty much everything back for the next year. The next year I was a starting guard. We played three guards and two forwards. We didn’t have a center, we just used a wide open style with like I say three guards. So I played guard and we only lost one game that year in triple overtime. In those days second overtime was sudden death. The first two consecutive points scored won the game. Well nobody scored so it went to a third overtime and we had fouled out everybody but four people. We ended up with just four on the floor. There were 77 fouls called in that game and that was against Watertown.
Mike Henriksen: Oh my heavens.
Roger Nelson: It was the 13th game of the year on the 13th on a Friday. That year we went on and won the state tournament and we beat Huron 50-49 in the finals.
Mike Henriksen: Huron was on a pretty good run then too. They must have been a heck of a rival for Brookings.
Roger Nelson: It was mainly Brookings, Watertown, and Huron.
Mike Henriksen: So how about the following year? How did you follow that up?
Roger Nelson: The following year we lost our two top scorers in Byron Luke and Don Rhykus. Again we played well but we got beat by Sioux Falls twice and that cost us the conference. We did make it to the state tournament and we had beaten Aberdeen twice during the year and they upset us in the first game of the state tournament. We ended up getting fifth place that year.
Then we lost pretty much everybody that year. Then my senior year we started out the season with a win over the Flandreau Indian team and then we lost to Yankton and to Aberdeen, which really set us back in the conference standings. We stayed overnight in Aberdeen, then went over to Sisseton and beat Sisseton 66-60. They had the big boys that were about 6’4″, 6’5″, 6’6″. We weren’t too tall. We came back and we kind of started our run then.
At Christmastime, we played Rapid City and we were ranked Number 1. Rapid City was Number 2. We played them in the little gym here in Brookings. We won the first game and they won the second one just because of that V and H. They missed the free throw and the ball bounced to that side and their 6’5″ guy just laid it back in and that gave them a one point victory.
The Number 1 and Number 2 teams split at Christmastime. They kind of kept us that way and we never lost another game until we lost to Madison. That put us in a tie with Washington High for the last game of the year. We beat Washington High I think by 25 points at home. We ended up winning the ESD. We did win the ESD three out of the four years I was in high school.
Mike Henriksen: Now what year was it that you graduated?
Roger Nelson: 1954.
Mike Henriksen: 1954 was rather unique too because I’m taking a look at the A bracket for the state tournament and, let’s see, you’ve got Sioux Falls, which back then was one of the biggest schools in the country, right? Not just in the state.
Roger Nelson: Right.
Mike Henriksen: Then you had Custer and Webster and Madison and Parkston and Deadwood, and Deadwood ended up winning the whole thing.
Roger Nelson: Yeah, as you noticed the number 1 and number 2 team in the state did not make it. We got beat by Flandreau High School who had a good ball club and good height and I believe Rapid City got beat by Sturgis if I remember right. Deadwood ended up beating Parkston in the finals.
Mike Henriksen: How times have changed, huh?
Roger Nelson: Yeah, isn’t that right? When I was a freshman, we had had 16 teams only. Then my sophomore year was when they changed it to 32 in the 51-52 season.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, also while you were in Brookings High School, you guys had a heck of a football team. Tell me about that.
Roger Nelson: This was kind of a different situation for me in that I was a pretty big kid when I was a freshman. The year before, Dave Christianson had cracked a bone in his ankle so they decided freshman couldn’t play either B Team or A Team in football. All we did was play in a freshmen schedule of about three or four games. At that time I was playing fullback and end. I go home that summer and Coach White decides that I’m going to play center on the football team the next year. Back in those days, center is the worst place you could play because you didn’t get to do anything. I’ll tell you, I really had fun playing because you had nobody to block usually in front of you. You could go down field and pick up a linebacker and I really enjoyed it. We ended up with about a 50/50 season that year.
The next year, the coach sent a ball home with me and said, “You better do some passing this year. You’re going to be the quarterback.” I said, “What?” I’m going from center to quarterback. Well, what the deal was, Nick Johnson had played quarterback his freshman, sophomore, and junior year. Of course, he was a 10-flat man and they didn’t need him at quarterback anymore, they needed him at running back. So I was elevated to the quarterback spot. I played linebacker the year before and also my junior year. We won every game that year.
The final game, which was on Halloween night, we had a ball game with Washington High and they were also undefeated. It turned out to be a 14 to 14 tie. We used kind of a spread where we’d lay back 15 yards out and 15 yards back. I would get the ball and either hand off or I’d turn and throw back to Nick], then he’d do whatever he wanted to do with it. With his speed he could do quite a few things. That was the only game we used that.
Mike Henriksen: That was one of the legendary football games in South Dakota High School history. The two undefeateds, Brookings and Washington, playing to a 14 all tie. Roger, there was an awful lot of folks who were in somebody’s hall of fame in that football game, weren’t there? There was an amazing array of talent.
How’s about your senior year in football?
Roger Nelson: That’s a tough one to talk about.
Mike Henriksen: Oh really?
Roger Nelson: I went from quarterback to tackle.
Mike Henriksen: No kidding.
Roger Nelson: I’d hurt my knee against Washington High. I didn’t play the last 8-9 minutes against Washington High. I asked the coach, “I’d just rather not play quarterback.” I didn’t want to get hit and get my knee hurt for basketball. I moved to the tackle position and we won one game, we tied two, and every game we lost was probably by two touchdowns is all. We only had three returning letter men from the year before. We had only used 12 players the year before. We didn’t use hardly anybody except the one guy come in at linebacker and guard went out. We didn’t have much experience but we still played a pretty competitive football.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, you made mention of the fact that you were a pretty big kid in high school and yet you had played guard in basketball. You had to be one of the bigger guards around, weren’t you?
Roger Nelson: Yes, I was. And the thing was, the coach would set up a play from the guard spot that would usually put me back underneath the basket, right down underneath. And like I say, with that narrow lane it made it a lot easier, too. Being tall, getting the ball down there and then also being guarded by a guard, because it usually wouldn’t be a center or forward come out and guard me.
Mike Henriksen: So tell us about the recruiting process. What was that like back in 1954?
Roger Nelson: Well, it was all pretty simple. After I graduated I drove to Vermilion and I talked to Duane Clodfelder because two of my ex high school teammates were going to school down there. Steve Le Fever and Larry Fry. So they had told me to come down and spend the weekend with them and talk to Clodfelder and it was just that simple. That was it.
Mike Henriksen: Was there any talk about staying at home and playing at South Dakota State?
Roger Nelson: Very little. Utah did offer me a scholarship. Ted Burner, who played for Watertown, had talked to the coach and the coach called me. I just don’t know why. I knew Ted Burner but not that well He was two years ahead of me and as a sophomore you don’t associate too much with a senior from another team. But he suggested. So I actually planned on going out there until just the last minute and I decided to go to the U. (Univeristy of South Dakota)
Mike Henriksen: Tell us about another member of the South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame that we recently lost, Duane Clodfelder. Cloddy was one of a kind, wasn’t he?
Roger Nelson: Yeah, he was completely different than Coach White that I had in high school. The thing is, that’s who we’d beaten in the finals in 1952, was Duane Clodfelder’s Huron team. So he knew me and back in those days you didn’t meet many of the other team members or coaches ’cause you just didn’t go any place except when you went and played them. But Cloddy was very defensive minded. He didn’t worry too much about the offensive shooting or anything like that. He had his plays, all pretty simple, but the defense was what we really had to work on.
Mike Henriksen: And he took a very unique group of people and molded them together, didn’t he?
Roger Nelson: This is something that probably has never happened. First semester we played freshman ball. Back in those days you couldn’t play varsity. And then at semester time, Jim and Cliff Daniels transferred from a team out of Lincoln, Missouri. They were from Brooklyn, New York and they’d come all the way out to Lincoln, Missouri, Lincoln University. And they transferred up to the U and we began playing them together. That starting five the second semester of our freshman year was the same starting five that won the national tournament four years later.
Mike Henriksen: The Daniel Brothers coming in, that had to be unique for you. Had you ever played with a person of another race?
Roger Nelson: No. Just the Flandreau Indians, of course, we’d play against, but that was it. Well, even at the university there were only three black students and that was Jim and Cliff and a kid from Sioux City.
Mike Henriksen: That had to take some adjustment, didn’t it, in the 1950s?
Roger Nelson: Yeah, although it wasn’t as bad here as it was when we traveled. That made it tougher because there’s times they wouldn’t let the colored people in the same hotel. Or when you go eat you had to check that out before you tried to eat any place. I know one time we were in Missouri playing the University of Missouri and after the game we went to this little hamburger malt shop afterwards. They ask us to leave because Jim and Cliff were with us.
Mike Henriksen: Wow. That truly was a different time, wasn’t it Roger?
Roger Nelson: Oh, yeah. The thing is, they got along well with everybody. They kind of stayed to themselves. They roomed together in the dorm, and they didn’t go out hardly at all because there just wasn’t any others at the school. You’d see them at the library and talk to them at the library. Otherwise the only time we’d really be together would be practice and at games.
Mike Henriksen: Was it ever an issue with the teammates? Were there some players on those teams who simply were uncomfortable playing with a couple of African Americans?
Roger Nelson: I don’t think so. I really don’t. They played the guard and they got the ball to us and then we got it back to them or on a fast break and things like that. No, I didn’t really think so.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, was there any discussion of you playing more than one sport down at USD?
Roger Nelson: Yeah, I was recruited to play quarterback and I told them when I went down there I just decided I didn’t want to get my knee hurt. I did go out for track my first two years, my freshman year and sophomore year, because I had won the state track discus throw in high school two times. My sophomore year I won the discus, junior year I won the discus and the senior year I got second.
Mike Henriksen: It had to be unique for you, at the University of South Dakota, to essentially be concentrating on just one sport.
Roger Nelson: Well yes, but back then the coach didn’t meet with you or have anything to do with you until October 15th. And when the season was over, the season was over. And we just did it on our own. I don’t know if the coach couldn’t be with us, it might have been a rule. The NCAA Division Two, the first year they had that was my junior year.
Mike Henriksen: Oh, really?
Roger Nelson: Yep. That was when we tied with State (South Dakota State) for the conference, one loss apiece. We had a play off game at Huron and we beat State. We went on and went to the national tournament and got beat by Wheaton the first game. We were ahead 15 points at half time and got beat by ten. And Wheaton went on and won the next two games by 20 points. So like I say, that was the first year ever of Division Two.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, tell us about your senior year and that run to the national title.
Roger Nelson: I’ll pull back just a little. My junior year I played forward and Jim Truelson from Emmetsburg, Iowa was the center. Clay Kiewel was the other forward and Jim and Cliff were the guards with Maury Haugland from Myrtle as the 6th man. We went with mainly just six people that year. We played University of Wisconsin and beat them in overtime. And we played Missouri every year and they’d always beat us by ten points. So then our senior year, after losing to Wheaton our junior year, we decided we’d better learn how to bring the ball down the floor and play a little better defense. Wheaton had only lost one person also from their team. And we started out the year playing Purdue, Northwestern, Missouri, Wisconsin. We lost one other game, I think it was to Regis of Colorado. Later on in that year we played Regis again and beat them.
So that was our five losses and we had won two other games in there. We started out the year two and five. And after our last loss, we never lost another game. We went undefeated in the conference and then we played I believe it was Wartburg and Knox College in the regional. And then went on and played Southwest Missouri and then we played Wheaton, who was the team that beat us the year before and was the Division Two national champions. We beat them 64-60 and now we were to be into the final game with St. Michael’s College out of Vermont, an all men’s school of about 1,000. It turned out to be no contest at all. We ended up winning, I believe it was 75-53.
Mike Henriksen: What were your expectations and what was the team’s expectations going into that championship game?
Roger Nelson: Boy, that’s an awful long time ago. That’s 51 years ago.
Mike Henriksen: I’m aware of that, but you’ve remembered almost everything else about the race.
Roger Nelson: I remember they had a center. By now I’m playing center. Six foot three, because we’d lost Jim Truelson from the year before, so I moved into the center spot. I remember he was six foot five and about 270. And I was only 6’3 and about 215, so I knew I was gonna have a battle. And they had another guy and I don’t know how old he was but he was bald headed and he was the tough strong kid of the team, too. I guess we just went in, we were ready for them. I know I fouled the guy out by shooting scoop shots on him and things like that. I was kind of an awkward shooter anyway. So he had trouble and he ended up fouling out and I know we didn’t play the last five, six minutes of the game because we had them down that far. But everybody, I’m sure, was ready to play, and that’s what we did.
Mike Henriksen: What was the celebration like? Because now winning a national title, of course, it’s huge news. What was the celebration like back at USD?
Roger Nelson: First of all, we had 500 students that traveled to Evansville, Indiana. And they had about a five or six piece band and were they noisy. And they were running up and down the bleachers or the aisles getting Evansville people to route for us and actually that’s about the way it ended. Everybody in the place was routing for a place called South Dakota. We played this on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So afterwards we decided to go out and Clodflder said, “You behave yourselves, you don’t do anything you haven’t been doing.” So we did go to the place where the other students were to celebrate, and when we walked in, the bar owner says, “Get out of here.” ‘Cause we had Jim and Cliff with us.
Mike Henriksen: Really?
Roger Nelson: Yep. And this was in Kentucky. We just went across the line into Kentucky. And he said, “Just get out of here.” And when he said that, the other 30, 40 university students also left. So he kind of ruined a good night for him.
Mike Henriksen: Wow.
Roger Nelson: So then we just went back to the hotel. Then Joe Foss, who was the governor, got the Purdue University airplane to come and get us and fly us into Huron for the State A Boys Basketball Tournament. That’s where I met Rex Swett, because he was playing for Huron that year. So we were introduced at half time, then I’d talk to Rex afterwards and stuff. Then we stayed overnight there in Huron. Then next day we flew into Sioux Falls and we had a parade from Sioux Falls on into Vermilion and we were treated there at the University gym. The New Armory, they called it, and it’s now the Al Neuharth Center, and we just had a get together. Talking, everybody had a little something to say in front of the fans that were there. And then after that we were invited to different towns for banquets. I know Yankton and Watertown and of course the one ourselves right at Vermilion and there were a couple others, I can’t remember now where it all was.
Mike Henriksen: That had to be quite a thrill for a kid from Brooking, South Dakota.
Roger Nelson: Oh yeah, it really was. Along with Clay Kiewel, him and I became best of friends. We used to do a lot of hunting together and we still keep in touch quite a bit. In fact, we had our reunion this past fall and we had all the seniors back except for Cliff Daniels. So we had a real good time.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, when did you decide that coaching was something you wanted to get into?
Roger Nelson: Well, I think it was way back even when I was in high school. I liked helping young kids, even then, and got to Vermillion and I did the same down there with young kids from their high school and their junior high kids that were always tagging along. I was the one that really talked to those kids.
Mike Henriksen: Right.
Roger Nelson: So I knew then, in short course. I took the classes and back then they always thought you had to take science classes to be a coach, or social studies. Well, I wanted to teach math so I tried to get some math and I ended up getting a minor in math. And then I did go out and coach at Hartley, Iowa in 1958. I coached there for three years and taught math at that school. And then I came back in what was on a math and science institute to gain more knowledge in mathematics.
Mike Henriksen: What was that like?
Roger Nelson: The coaching was real good. I was 7 and 14 the first year, and then the next two years I was 14 and 7. But it was a funny thing. In my very first year, I didn’t have that good a team, not very good seniors. Had some good underclassmen and then I recruited three kids from a town that was closing in Juniata, Iowa. I recruited three kids from there and the one was my leading scorer then the next two years. But the first sectional tournament I played in, we had to play against Sioux Center, Iowa, and Sioux Center was undefeated that year. Believe it or not, they dressed their first five at halftime.
Mike Henriksen: Really?
Roger Nelson: Yes. As a coach, you didn’t think you would ever get beat that bad but we did. He was good to me and they ended up winning the Iowa State Championship, undefeated.
Mike Henriksen: Oh, man.
Roger Nelson: But then the next two years, I had pretty good years. Like I say, I went back and I decided to stay in South Dakota. I took a job at Colman and I had a couple good athletes there, or a couple good years of athletics there. I coached everything there, and had good years there.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, what is that like coaching every sport? Because especially in a small school, you’re with those boys literally year-round and heck, some of those guys also coached the legion team in the summer while they were at it. You were in constant contact with that group of kids. What was that like?
Roger Nelson: Oh, I liked it. I really liked it because you got the kids under your control all the time. If you got some good athletes, of course it makes it a lot better. I coached the three sports in high school and then I coached the Legion. I coached the teener and I coached the little league and I coached the girls softball.
Mike Henriksen: See, I thought that maybe you were one of those that-
Roger Nelson: And I took the kids swimming twice a week, over to Madison in the bus. So I kept fairly busy.
Mike Henriksen: I’d say so. After Colman, where did you go?
Roger Nelson: Then I went out to Fort Pierre one year. Bernie Duffy talked me into coming out to Fort Pierre and coach, and they’d had a real good team the year before and they’d lost all five of them. By the time I got out there, they had four other kids that moved away, so I ended up with not too good a ball club. I was 7 and 14, I think, that year. The only high spot was that we beat Agar. Agar was tough and somehow or another, we had a good ball game and we beat Agar.
And then I got out of coaching for two years. Actually, longer than that. But I got out of coaching and teaching ,and then I did go up to Onida for two years as principal and math and physics teacher. That was the years of the good teams out in Onida. We used to scrimmage those teams with our independent team and we beat them. When those kids were juniors, that’d be Danny Lamb, Dave Thomas, Hydes and those kids, and we beat them when they were juniors. But their senior year, we could not beat them and that was Jim Sutton, John Knox, Bob Yackley and myself, Ron Lawrence, and we’d scrimmage them and we could not beat them. That was year they won the state tournament.
Mike Henriksen: You had some pretty good talent on that amateur team, didn’t you?
Roger Nelson: Yes, we did.
Mike Henriksen: Those are some pretty decent names there.
Roger Nelson: Yeah, and we just couldn’t beat them. They were really tough that year.
Mike Henriksen: So what was next?
Roger Nelson: Then I came back this side of the state and was principal at West Central for two years, and then I got out of that and moved to Flandreau. All my five kids all graduated from Flandreau High School but in the meantime, I took a job at Canova. I was gonna get out of teaching. After two years teaching at Flandreau, I was gonna get out of teaching and they needed a principal over there and a math teacher. So I go over there. Now this is in 1974 and first girls basketball hadn’t started but I started it over there. Well actually, they had done some playing over there but I continued then with that.
This is the year before they had the A in the playoffs, and we played 12 games that year. We were nine and three. We’d played Menno a couple times, Montrose, and teams right close by, so we had kind of a head start. Then the next year, the playoffs started then and we made it to the state tournament, and I had all my girls back for the next year. We also got back to the state tournament that year, and then the next year, I’d lost two or three seniors but we also made it back that year and we got seventh place. The fourth year, the same thing. We got seventh place, so I had three seventh-place finishes and a third-place finish.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, what were the early years of South Dakota high school girls’ basketball like?
Roger Nelson: Well, our conference was real weak over there and I had four tall girls all the time. All farm girls and they were tough and strong in that way. We shot a lot and rebounded a lot, and the percentages, it wasn’t that good. Of course, we used the boy’s basketball to begin with. The first seven years, we used the big basketball, not the one they do now. Some of the teams weren’t very good. The state record was 107 points by Irene and I told the girls one night, “We’re gonna break the state record. I don’t want you to play any defense, just let them go score but when we come back, don’t pass more than two times and shoot the ball and rebound.” I had 15 girls dressed and I played 15 girls every quarter, and we shot 110 times.
Mike Henriksen: My heavens.
Roger Nelson: We shot 110 times and at that time, it was a national record. Wakonda had shot 107 in a game one time but we shot 110 times and we scored 110 points.
Mike Henriksen: Wow.
Roger Nelson: I believe everybody scored and, like I say, I played all 15 every quarter. It was different but we scored. I think we scored over 100 four times that year. Later on that year, a team from out west scored 126 points to break the record. But a lot of the teams just hadn’t played basketball and of course, the jump ball wasn’t in effect yet. Their girls would come dribbling down the floor and stop and just stand there with the ball. Well, I had my girls instructed to grab the ball and either get a jump out of it or pull it away. They had a lot of that, and I think that is why they decided to go to the alternating jump ball.
Mike Henriksen: Which, by the way, as a broadcaster, I am thankful for on a nightly basis. There aren’t a lot of us around necessarily that remember those days. It wasn’t that long ago but it seems like a long, long time ago.
Roger Nelson: Yeah. I tell some people that knowledge, “Oh, what do you mean? What do you mean you had a jump ball?” I think you could go back to that because there are not many jump balls anymore.
Mike Henriksen: No, there aren’t.
Roger Nelson: We used to have a lot of plays off of that jump ball. You’d go to the closest circle and you’d just make a motion on your hip or on your shoulder or something, where you’re gonna tip and you had a certain play set up.
Mike Henriksen: What got you into officiating, Roger?
Roger Nelson: I went the U (Univeristy of South Dakota) and I helped Dan Lennon run the intramural program. I better just say, I did the intramural program for Dan Lennon. We had touch football and of course, I kinda just refereed that myself. And then we’d get into softball, and I played softball of course, but I umpired it and I got another guy to help. So I umpired it and I really liked it. Then when I got over to Hartley, Iowa, you had to referee the preliminary games or the junior high games, and I really liked it. Anytime I could, I’d referee or umpire, and I umpired baseball and the fastpitch and slowpitch. I even got into wrestling. In the first nine years, I refereed wrestling and enjoyed it.
Mike Henriksen: I didn’t know that.
Roger Nelson: Yeah, and of course volleyball. Actually, I was one of the ones that got volleyball started when I was at Canova. Canova, Sioux Valley, the two Flandreau teams, and Brookings had what they called the Alpha Five. We had volleyball every Saturday with those five teams. Now, that was back in ’76 I think, when we started that. I wanted my girls to be doing something in the winter time.
Mike Henriksen: Right.
Roger Nelson: And so did they. So we started that and of course, I don’t think volleyball really started until, what, ’83?
Mike Henriksen: Yeah, early ’80s.
Roger Nelson: We actually started it over there and then Parker started it. They had some teams down there that started. I think Ron Nelson got his start down in the Parker area. Well, the first whole match we had at Canova, I had to referee and I was coach because no one knew how to referee it. So then I got into that, and I started a lot of young kids refereeing. I refereed the state amateur tournament, which is a blast in more than one way, 26 straight years. I did referee four amateur games this year. And I refereed with my grandson Aaron Entringer, so I kinda liked that.
Mike Henriksen: That has to be very, very special and that’s what I wanted to get to was the number of people that you have influenced to get into officiating. I don’t wanna say it’s become the family business but it’s certainly become an offshoot of the family business, hasn’t it?
Roger Nelson: Oh, yeah. I don’t know how many I started. I wish I would have marked down something that happened every game or who I refereed with. Terry Duffy started working with me after I lost my son-in-law Mike Entringer. Michael laid down one night and passed away. So then Terry started refereeing with me and I told him, “Try to keep track of everything. Every game, who you reffed with, and things like that.” And I’m sure he does quite a bit of that.
But there’s a lot of little incidents that happened when I refereed. I know one night I was refereeing at Tri-Valley and at halftime, this guy comes down and he hands me a pair of old glasses. So I just stuck them in my pocket, so I’ll get even with him. About a week or two or three later, I was refereeing in Tri-Valley again and I blew the whistle, called something kinda right in front of him and he kinda stood up and was hollering at me, and I had brought along one of those big baby whistles. I took it out of my pocket and I threw it up to him in the crowd. The crowd got a big chuckle out of that.
Mike Henriksen: Now, two years ago, did you think you and I would be having this conversation?
Roger Nelson: No. I’ll tell you Mike. I looked in the mirror and I weighed 150 pounds. I’d lost 75 pounds. I figured she was over. They had quit giving me chemo because they told me the chemo was gonna kill me ’cause I was too weak. They said that I’d live longer with my cancer. One day about the middle of September, I got an appetite back, and I hadn’t really ate for two or three months. I got this appetite back and I’ve been eating ever since and that’s really fun. I gained 75 pounds back so I’m back to 225.
Mike Henriksen: It is an amazing story. Roger, of all your stories, that may be the most amazing one. You know that, don’t you?
Roger Nelson: Yeah. No, that’s right. I am very thankful, and I know a lot of people did some praying for me.
Mike Henriksen: No question about it. Roger, congratulations on the induction into the South Dakota Sports Hall of Fame. I imagine it’s gonna be a big night for family and friends.
Roger Nelson: Oh, yes. Yep. Yeah, it certainly will.
Mike Henriksen: Roger, congratulations. Thanks so much for the time, and you just keep showing up to ball games all right?
Roger Nelson: Yeah. I made 340 basketball games last year but I’m down a little this year, although there’s a few more to go to. I’m at 260 this year. When I do have some spare time, I go to the basketball games.