Tom Casey

From First Person, Legendary South Dakota Sports Stories, by Mike Henriksen, copyright, Mariah Press, 2018

In 1970 Tom Casey found himself in South Dakota. What he has done since then is fascinating.

He is a long-time sportscaster and a lot more. Tom, thank you for joining us. How are you doing?

TOM: It’s a beautiful, beautiful day. Enjoying the weather.

MIKE: Tom, let’s talk about your background first of all. Where did you grow up?

TOM: Well, my father was in the Air Force for 25 years . I was actually born in Germany, in Munich. He had been stationed there after World War II. And I lived there for a year. I learned to walk on the ship coming back to the U.S. Then we lived in Detroit, Michigan; Montgomery, Alabama; back to Detroit; a year in Pennsylvania when he was in Korea; two and a half years in Albuquerque, New Mexico; two and a half years in Grand Forks, North Dakota; two years in Ottawa, Canada; and then his final tour was at Colorado Springs, Colorado. I went to high school 10, 11 and 12 there. And I went to the University of Colorado on a gymnastics scholarship in 1966.I  graduated, and there was a master’s degree program here on Pine Ridge that peaked my interest.

It happens it came up back in the 1970s .The Viet Nam War was on and we had invaded Cambodia. There were protests all across the country on college campuses.. And, in the middle of that they kinda called off school at the University of Colorado. But this professor said “you know we have some students that are working up on Pine Ridge reservation. Would any of you be interested in going up there and working on a Masters degree?”

 So a month later I was here. I came for a year or two in 1970, and here it is 2016. Forty-six years later I’m still here.

MIKE: Tom Casey is with radio station KILI. But I want to go back to moving around as much as you did as a kid. What was that like?

TOM: You learn how to make friends quickly, because every two years you moved and so you had to figure things out. Get to know people and that was a challenge. And so that’s what you did. It’s interesting that I was with a young woman in college and she’d been a Navy brat. And we were talking about getting together and she said, “I don’t want to move anywhere. I want to settle in and grow some roots.” And I said, ‘well it doesn’t really matter if you’re with people you love, then it doesn’t matter where you are, if you move or whatever.”

The irony of that is I moved here and been here for 46 years. And, you know, it wasn’t in the plans. But, that was a key thing, learning how to get along with people, make new friends. You know, that was the key thing.

MIKE: Alright, so gymnastics. How did you pick that up?

TOM: You know, I’d played baseball, and basketball. And, this was when I was in Ottawa, Canada, part of the gym class was gymnastics and I just adapted to it real quickly. And so the next year, as a freshman in high school, they had a gymnastics team, so I played basketball, and I continued to play baseball, but I also did gymnastics.  And you know, I did OK. In Colorado during that time they had high school gymnastics, both boys and girls, and so, I was on the gymnastics team at Watson High School at Colorado Springs. As a junior, we took second in the state, and the coach at Colorado  saw me and said, “Would you be interested in coming to the University of Colorado? We can’t give you a BIG scholarship, but tuition, fees and books, or something like that.”

I said, “Sure.”

So, I went to the University of Colorado. My sophomore year we went to the NCAA tournament. We’d won the Big 8 championship. Obviously now it is the Big 12. Back then it was the Big 8. And so we’d won that Big 8 championship and then gone to the NCAA championship  in Tucson, Arizona.

So, I did it four years in college and that’s how I ended up being in gymnastics.

MIKE: Where did the broadcasting bug bite you?

TOM: Well you know, you’re here on Pine Ridge, and I had worked with the volunteer program. It was a Master’s Degree program but you also did volunteer work, and we worked on building these little learning centers in each community.. And then I ended up getting into administration on the volunteer program.

And when the program ended, I kind of knocked around a little bit here. I mean I worked in a bowling alley, I worked in a city park south of the reservation in Gordon, Nebraska. And I ended up going to work for Oglala Lakota College. And I ended up working for them for 14 years. Well, I ended up creating my own job in media and publications. Journalism was not really my background or photography, but I was able to get into both those skills. Did a newspaper for the college and then, the radio station, KILI radio, a 100,000 watt FM non-commercial community radio station, started in ’83. Well, by ’85 I thought, well, we ought to be tapping this to get word out about the college, so I got hooked up to do a show. This is in February of 1985, I did “On the road with Oglala Lakota College.” It  was a Sunday night show. Four hours. And I’d interview somebody from the college, a student, a staff member, or community member about the college, about the community. And that went fine.

Then the next spring of ’86, there was a Presidential election and they asked me if I would help out interviewing for that. I said, “sure,” so I did that. We interviewed the Presidential and vice presidential candidates.  

Well then, they were in the beginnings of broadcasting basketball, and the broadcaster, the man who was doing it, was getting tired of it, so the program director at the time asked me if I would like to try it out with him. And so we did a couple of games. And this was in the spring of ’86. I said, “What game’s next?” And he said, “well, there’s a triple header in Rapid City.” “Who’s doing it?” “Well, you are.”

It wasn’t doing just one game. It was doing three games – by myself! That was definitely a baptism.

And that was in the spring of ’86, so I’ve now been doing it for 30 years.

So, I continued to work full-time at the college and volunteer almost full-time at the radio station. Did a lot of games. Did interviewing and programming for them. And then in ’89 I moved over from the college to the radio station full-time. And after a year I ended up being the acting station manager and I’ve pretty much been in that position all along. But, you know, in order to keep going in a small radio station you wear a lot of hats. You know, that’s just part of it. And in between times of elections in the fall, well, you’re doing football games. I did a little volleyball. But girls and boys basketball ended up being the main focus of my broadcasting as far as sports goes.

But, over the years, you know there’s always requests. And so, they used to have the D.J. Weston Memorial Basketball Tournament. They had divisions 7-9 year olds, 10-12 and 13-15. And just because I’d know there’d be a lot of interest, I would broadcast the championship game of each division at the end of the tournament. And, you know, I mean like 7-9 year olds, I mean, it’s a lot different than broadcasting high school, or I’ve even done some college games. Long ways from that. But, the kids are out there hustling 100 percent, and, you’ve got relatives, you’ve got family members, you’ve got grandparents that are listening on the radio. And for them it is just so special to hear. Even if it’s a 7 year old or a 9 year old out there, you know.

I do an awful lot of high school games. And certainly, like say for Red Cloud, Pine Ridge, or Little Wound, you have fans from each one of those schools that listens, but at the same time, you have community members out there who just enjoy hearing a game of local teams – Little Wound vs. Red Cloud, or Pine Ridge vs. Todd County. No matter what the team is, they just enjoy listening to that game on the radio.

Anyway, that’s how it started.

MIKE: Before we get into the broadcast more, what was your actual major in college, Tom?

TOM: I majored in international affairs, and that’s kind of  basically under Political Science. It required three years of a language, and I did a couple years of French, and the third year of French was at 7:30 in the morning, and I really struggled with that. So, I just changed it to Political Science. And so I ended up getting a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and then a Masters Degree in Sociology.

MIKE: And what were you thinking you were going to do with that?

TOM: You know, I really didn’t have the faintest idea. Like, you know, you’re always like ‘What are you going to do when you grow up?’

Well, I have no idea. I’m just going to try a lot of different things, you know. I mean I had my Masters Degree so I ended up teaching at Oglala Lakota College. And then I ended up in media, although I didn’t have a journalism or photography background.

One of the things about a college education, it does prepare you to learn. It prepared you to figure things out and do research. It just gives you the skills to get up to speed on things. And so, at the college, in addition to teaching, I started getting into media. You know, I did photography. I did that, and then I wrote. And so, through that, I ended up part of the newspaper and then I did the college brochures, posters, the college catalogue, annual report and so forth.

So, you know, that basically got me into media. So, when the radio station came up, it was, OK, never done radio, never been on the radio before, let’s try it out! Let’s check it out, you know. And certainly, and you as an interviewer know, if you have a natural curiosity that gets you a long ways. You listen carefully to the interview and you’re listening to what the person’s saying. Obviously, you have some things you’d like to talk about, but you go with the flow of the interview to the area, you know the strengths, or the areas where the person you’re interviewing takes you. But you cover the areas you want to, too, but at the base of it is a natural curiosity. And that’s what I had.

And so, I didn’t think anything about getting into radio. When I started the radio show, I just had to learn how to operate the board and so forth. And then  I could talk to people. I could interview people.

My radio show, the first one I ever did, was blues and jazz. And they had no show like that on KILI radio. The program director said, “I don’t care what people say, we’re going to do it. It adds to our programming and diversifies us.” And so, I did blues and jazz.

A funny story. I had no problem with doing blues and jazz music. But one night, I started playing Big Band music, just as a variety. And I couldn’t believe the calls that I got. It was from an older generation, much older than my generation. People who grew up with big band music, that was their music. Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, and it just took you into a different era. These people, that was their music and they really enjoyed hearing that music. So every Sunday night I’d play a little big band as well..

So, that’s how I got into it. And I had been a sports person all my life. I did sports myself. I’ve always followed certainly football, basketball, baseball, soccer some, tennis, golf. So, when the idea came up ‘Well, here, you want to try play-by-play broadcasting?’  – “Yeah. I’ll try that.” I mean you just try it. You give a shot, you know. And that’s…I had the opportunity. I jumped in. And away we went.

MIKE: All right, a guy who literally has grown up all over the country, and lived in various places, but had kind of settled into Colorado. What did you know about the Pine Ridge of South Dakota before you got there?

TOM: Nothing. I mean, there had been a baseline study done, like in 1968, and I read through that.

I really didn’t know anything. I mean, I’d never been on a reservation before. In Albuquerque, you’re basically in Navajo country, in Pueblo country. You know, I was a kid. I was in second grade-third-fourth grade in Albuquerque, so I basically didn’t have any contact. So, I came to Pine Ridge just with my eyes open ready to listen and to learn. That’s how I came. And that’s what I did.

I ended up being assigned to go to Wounded Knee. I looked at Wounded Knee and they told me to go see an elder in the community and he said, “Well, you could live up there.” Up a little ways above the housing there was an old cannery kitchen. The upstairs, the windows are kinda out of it, but the basement was secure. So, I set up shop. It had electricity. Had no water, no heat, nothing. So, I started off by getting frame and put a sink over it with a bucket underneath it and got a stove, a heating stove,  and then a cooking stove. No water, so I went out back and dug an outhouse hole and got an outhouse. And so, that’s basically how I started in Wounded Knee, and it, it was definitely different. But I mean, the whole deal was that you, you’re open. You’re open to different things, a different way of life, a different culture. And, again, by my background of moving all over the country

MIKE: That had to have helped with that situation, right?

TOM: Absolutely. You get to know people You learn about people, you know. And you listen. And you ask questions. And so that’s what I did. I’d had a lifetime of doing that already. And so coming to Wounded Knee wasn’t really any different.

Here’s a bit of irony. I’d gone on some training in September and October. And there was a couple of folks that were from here. One man from Wounded Knee and some others from around the reservation. These are Oglala Lakota people. And so we went on this training. When we came back, the young man who had gone with me from Wounded Knee on the train, he came knocking on my door with his wife, and he said, “I was going to move with my wife and two kids over to the old place, but my uncle who has ten kids moved down here to Wounded Knee and he’s living there, so I need a place to live.”

I said, “OK. Well, it’s a one-room basement, but we could build you a bedroom and that’d be fine.” So, they moved in. That was in November of ’70. And the next month, in December, his wife’s sister, cousin, and father, who was Grandpa to the two kids, who were 2 and just under a year old. So, the grandpa moved in, and then the wife’s sister and cousin moved in. And then, a month later, there was some drinkin’ business on top of the hill, and his sister and husband and three kids moved in, so basically it was a one-room place, but we ended up with about 13 people, and that was the beginning. So, obviously you got to know people real well that way.

And, I continued to work. We were both volunteers, but we were getting a stipend, so we were at least bringing in some income, so that’s what happened. Some people were working and had some resources then, people needed a place to stay. And that’s why sometimes, in Lakota country, you don’t really have homelessness because he have people who bring people in, you know, bring your relatives in and so forth.

But that was my welcome and introduction to Wounded Knee.

MIKE: So when did that living situation change? What was your next living situation?

TOM: Well,  my mother got sick in August. They were living in Colorado Springs, so I went back down there. And I was gone for about a month. And when I came back, all my stuff had been pushed into a corner and another family had moved in.

So, I moved over across the creek. And there was an old rehab house there, it was a two-room house. No electricity. No water. But it had a cook stove that you could use for heat, and a woodstove for heat. So, I lived there through the fall.

I mean it’s hard to heat with wood if you’re there by yourself. Say you’re gone all day, then you come back to a cold house and then you’re cranking up the wood stove to get it warm. Wood is, you gotta keep minding it, you know. So, one day, one cold winter night in December, I was visiting the brother of the original family that had moved in with me, him and his wife and little boy. And they had a Grandpa there. I had supper there, and so I spent the night. I just rolled out my sleeping bag in the corner and spent the night. I spent the next night there. And then I went to a wedding up in Wanblee, for a couple days. Came back and his wife says, “Well, it’s about time you got home.” I lived there for the next year and a half.

I mean, honestly, I became part of Wounded Knee, and then that program ended, and that’s when I kind of bounced around a little bit, still living at Wounded Knee, but ended up going to work for the college.

I started at the college in ’75. I was an instructor, and then a department chair. And then I created the position Director of Media and Publications.. You know along the way a young woman from Wounded Knee and I started a family. We ended up with three children. We were together for 20 years, but at the 20^th year she decided to move on, and so I became a single parent with kids that were 7, 10 and 13. And so, I just stayed in Wounded Knee and raised the three kids. And they’re obviously all adults now, and I have six grandkids, and the three adult kids all live up in Rapid City, and so I’m able to see my grandkids on a regular basis. All three are members of the tribe.

MIKE: Most people, if their volunteer work was done, and after what you had been through for living conditions alone those first couple of years, they would have gone anyplace else in the world. What was it that made you stay?

TOM: Well, it had become home. Wounded Knee had become home. It’s the place where I felt comfortable. There was opportunity to do any number of things. You know, I mean, after the volunteer program was over with I went to work for the college and ended up teaching at the college. I ended up getting into photography and journalism. Started a newspaper. You know, I did college catalogue, and brochures, and posters. There was opportunity to do a whole lot of different things. Obviously, I enjoyed the people of Wounded Knee and I felt there was things to do and I felt at home. And so I stayed.

MIKE: I guess if this were an artist type of situation, it was a blank canvas for you.

TOM: There you go. You bet. How does a person live their life, you know?

MIKE: Tell us about your duties now at the radio station, because you’re 46 years into Pine Ridge, you’re 30 years into the radio station. What are your duties now?

TOM: You know, it’s still a small community radio station. And so, I oversee the operation of the station. I work on the schedule and make sure the schedule’s done, or if somebody can’t come to do a DJ shift, I make sure I get somebody else. I help with programming. We have a panel discussion, we have Oglala Lakota County  School Board coming up. We have nine candidates and we’re going to have a panel discussion on that on Thursday.

Later on this month, we’re going to have a panel discussion on economic development. I mean, here on Pine Ridge we have 40-80 percent unemployment. Across the state it’s certainly incredibly much lower than that. And, what is it in the country, like 5 percent, between 5 and 6 percent? But here on the reservation it’s 40-80 percent. So, we’ve set up a panel discussion.. It will be at the college’s library. It will be broadcast live on TV, radio, and on KOLC-TV. So basically, I put that together. I’ll moderate the panel discussion. That will be the third one that we’ve had in a month and a half.

I’m involved in that. You know we had a busy basketball season. I broadcast probably close to 100 games, boys and girls. So there’s that.

But, I, have to hustle money. I mean we can’t keep the radio station going without regular income coming in. It’s an independent radio station. We’re not under the tribe. It’s not a tribal station. It’s independent. And so we’re constantly looking for money to keep the doors open, pay the light bill. Water/light bill is anywhere from $1800 to $2500 a month. That has to be paid every month. We have a phone bills, both a landline and cell phones, you know, and it just goes on and on. So, you know, I’m responsible to make sure we get enough money in the door to pay the bills and keep going.

This past February we celebrated our 33^rd anniversary as a Lakota Community Radio Station here on Pine Ridge. We have a translator in Rapid City so we broadcast up there, too.

In a small operation like that, you end up wearing a lot of different hats. From managing to developing, being the development director, doing programming and scheduling, and if there’s a problem, something breaks down, you have to make sure somebody can come in and get it fixed and stuff like that. I mean it’s just a variety of things. But in between them, I do programming, interviews, panel discussions, things like that, and sports.

Alright Tom, let’s start taking a little bit about the sports, because you have seen some phenomenal teams through the course of the years. But you may get more grief for your vehicle and the miles that you put on. Tell us a little bit about what your travel schedule is like on an annual basis.

TOM: Well, you know, I’m a little past my prime now. I’m 67. But in my prime, I’d drive 50,000 to 75,000 miles a year.

All over the state, you know, doing broadcasts and things like that. Plus, when you live in Wounded Knee, we don’t really even have a store or anything in Wounded Knee. There’s a Post Office, and some churches and that, but nothing commercial. So, you’re always driving, you know, to get places. Drive to Rapid City, and drive to surrounding communities. So you put a lot of wear and tear.

Just on a side note,  I’ve had a problem. I’ve earned this nickname “Crash” because I have a tendency to run into animals. Over the time period, it’s not all one vehicle, of course. I’ve hit 24 deer, 10 horses, three big owls – I wouldn’t mention them, but if they’re big enough they can put a hole in your radiator – three wild turkeys, a sheep and a coyote. And I gotta tell you, the coyote ran into me. I didn’t run into him.

But that’s where the “Crash” comes from. A lot of different vehicles. But, you know, when you put a lot of miles on in South Dakota you have the potential of hitting quite a bit of animals, domestic and wild.

MIKE: That’s very, very true. But Tom, not only were you traveling at the height 50,000-75,000 miles, you also had a son, McKenzie Casey, who played basketball for South Dakota State University in Brookings. You didn’t miss many of his games, did you?

TOM: Well, you know, this is a little embarrassing to talk about. Well, I made it to their home games and that. Well, for me, going to the home games at SDSU at Brookings is like almost 400 miles one way.

MIKE: Right!

TOM: And so, yeah, I made as many games as I could. I mean, I was juggling, I continued to do broadcasts for KILI and making sure I could see my son play. In his sophomore year he went to Kentucky, played at Rupp Arena, University of Kentucky, and I kidded him, because I said “You got to fly. I had to drive.” Went to Rupp Arena and did that, then came back all the way back here, and then that weekend he played University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois. They’d been ranked No. 1 the previous year. That’s when he was a sophomore. You know, I’ve been to Milwaukee because they played Marquette. And they played the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and I’ve been to Missoula, Montana, and Lincoln, Nebraska, and I mean all over the place.

MIKE: And did it all while maintaining a broadcast schedule.

TOM: Yeah. I mean, that was the challenge. That was the challenge right there.

MIKE: Because basketball is king in your part of the state. How many basketball games do you broadcast a year, approximately?

TOM: Well,  I’d say it’s in the area of a hundred. We start December 6-7-8, somewhere in there, the girl’s season starts. And I can remembers a number of times driving over to St. Francis, which is over 100 miles away, to do Pine Ridge girls at St. Francis to start the season. And then that weekend,  the boys season gets underway, so there’ll be a boys game on Friday night. And then maybe a double header, Red Cloud and Spearfish will play each other to start the season, the last few seasons, whether it’s up at Spearfish or down at Red Cloud. And then there’s the Lakota Nation Invitational, which has become a 16 team boys and 16 team girls tournament in Rapid City at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. Well, we broadcast eight games a day. And I don’t do all eight games. I do five games a day. I have another crew that helps with the other three games. And so you go through the tournament, down to the championship game.

It used to be the girls were in the fall and the boys were in the winter. Then they moved the seasons so the girls and boys are the same season. Before that happened, the girls had an LNI in Huron. I was by myself, so I went and broadcast. I did eight straight games the first day of the tournament, the girls Lakota Nation Invitational. Eight. Straight. games! Talk about a marathon.

MIKE: And by the way, we should remind people. KILI radio has no commercials, correct?

TOM: Not a whole lot. I mean it’s a public, non-commercial station. We have a little underwriting, ‘portions of today’s broadcast is brought to you by’ but there’s not a lot of commercials, no.

MIKE: So, what I’m saying is, you’re doing eight games, and you’re not even taking two minute breaks for commercial purposes. I mean, that microphone goes on and eight games later that microphone goes off when you’re done.

TOM: Yeah, it’s a bit of a marathon. I told you about doing peewee games. There was a young boy who played there. His name was Ray Handboy. He didn’t have a left hand. You know, I just really enjoyed watching him play. He’d dribble the ball and just hustled like crazy. That’s where I first came across him. Because I broadcast those games, and they played in the championship game.

This is  quite the story. He went out for basketball at Rapid City Central as a Freshman and got cut from the team. Went out as a Junior, and he’d gained some height, and he made the JV team. Then he grew even a little taller, and he made the Varsity team as a Senior. And I told him, “If you get to play when you’re a senior, I’ll come and do one of your games.” So, I went there. I’d never seen Central play, or Sturgis  play. And my brother, who was pastor of a church in Wheaton, Illinois, flew in that night. I picked him up at the airport, went to the game, and he sat down next to me at the scorer’s table at Rapid City Central and I did the game. And I’d never seen either team, and it takes you a minute or two to get up to speed with the players and the numbers and that, and away we went.

And after the game, my brother said, “You know, we’re much alike in one way, we speak for what we do. But, I spend all week long preparing a sermon that goes about 20 minutes. You sit down here and talk an hour and a half straight, with two teams you’ve never seen before” and he was just flabbergasted a that a person could do that.

MIKE: Before we leave the Lakota Nation Invitational, I’ve been out there. Is there anyway to describe to people who haven’t seen it, just what the Lakota Nation Invitational is all about? Because it’s so much more than basketball. Obviously, that’s what you’re focusing on, but there’s so much more to it.

TOM: Yeah, but, you’re right, I mean, Wayne Carney comes out there, you know, the executive director of the South Dakota High School Activities Association. He usually comes out every year, because that’s just what you’re saying. It is so much more than basketball. You have a 16-team girls high school tournament and a 16-team boys high school tournament. You have hand games. And sometimes there can be as many as 40 hand game teams there. You have a knowledge bowl, a Lakota language bowl. You have an art exhibit, a wrestling tournament, archery tournament. You know, there’s a huge grand entry on Friday night before the two championship semi-final boys games go on. There’s so much to see and do and, probably the biggest thing about Lakota Nation, as Brian Brewer, the long time executive director says, there’s anywhere from 25,000 young people who are participating in a positive event. 

And that’s what it’s grown to be. At the Civic Center, four days in Rapid City, the second to third week in December. It’s just such an incredible event. Obviously basketball is a key there, but there’s so many different things going on.  I’ll give you one game in particular – it was Custer Wildcats coached by Larry Luitjens against  Red Cloud coached by Dusty LeBeau. They played the Championship on the Civic Center floor. I think this was in 1989. And it was a hard-fought game. It was one of those games where every possession, every turnover, every free throw, every one of those things counted. And Custer pulled out the win by three or four points. Hard-fought game.

Well, the interesting thing was that three months later, South Dakota  had a boys basketball tournament in Rapid City at the Civic Center. And the State Championship game was Custer and Red Cloud. Which, Custer won again. Again, by three or four points. Again, the same battle.

The respect that you have between two teams on the floor. They battle hard for a game, and afterwards come together, shake hands and hug each other, and show their appreciation for the battle that took place on that floor.

MIKE: You mentioned Coach Luitjens, obviously a legend. Let’s talk about some of the kids you’ve had the opportunity to cover.  First of all, I want to mention that your son McKenzie. Am I correct on this? Did he averaged a triple-double his senior year?

TOM: Well, not quite, he averaged 23 points a game, 9 rebounds, and about 7 and a half assists. So it wasn’t quite a triple double. Red Cloud didn’t make it to state. There wasn’t a lot of visibility. You know state tournament certainly gives a program a lot of visibility. And so, he didn’t get a lot of recognition.  But, one of the things that happened was that Dave Strain,  another long-time coach,  called Scott Nagy at SDSU and said, “There’s this point guard, plays for Red Cloud.” And they just really gave him a real big head’s up. And, in the end, SDSU called and said, “We’d like to you come to SDSU. We can’t guarantee you anything. We’d like you to come, and be part of the team.” So he ended up going to SDSU.

MIKE: And Scott Nagy still talks about the fact that it’s players like that, that when SDSU is having all of their success now, he thinks back to those guys that helped make that transition and that’s really helped build the program to where it is now. So, let’s talk about some of the other kids. I know there’s a long list here, but,who are  some of the best girls basketball players that you’ve had a chance to cover through the 30 years.

TOM: Well, Sue Ann Big Crow would have to be one of the best. As a sophomore she led her team Pine Ridge in the state A tournament that year. It was at the Sioux Falls Arena. And they played Milbank, who was the overwhelming favorite that year. And they were in the championship game.

The game was tied. I think it was 39 all with 10 seconds to go. And Sue Ann, who was, I mean, she wasn’t that big, she was like 5’ 7”, she was a point guard. She could do a lot. I mean she was quick, fast. Played great defense. Hustled the floor. Could lead the fast break. Could shoot like crazy. Really a solid student as well. And she really balanced academics and what she did on the floor. Anyway, she’s a sophomore, she brings the ball up. Everyone knows that she’s going to take the shot. She pulls up for about a 15-16 foot jumper, and she misses it. But, she follows the ball, gets the rebound, puts it up, and Pine Ridge beats Milbank by two for the State A Championship. That was 1989.

That was the year they had all three games, AA, A, and B in the Sioux Falls Arena, so you had back-to-back championship games going on. The B, the A, and the AA.

Becky Flynn played for Wakonda. They won the B tournament. So, it was a great tournament, but Sue Ann Big Crow had to be one of the best ever.

Another girl was Christian Janis. Christian was unbelievable. She averaged like 30-plus points a game. And 20 years later in 2009, it was another deal where Pine Ridge was in the championship game and playing Dell Rapids, who was, I think, an overwhelming favorite.. Christian was a guard. She was short. She was like 5’5” and could shoot like crazy. Really hustled like crazy.

But, they had a balance. And you know, in basketball,  the key is how do you bring a balance, your guards and that, with the big people. Pine Ridge had a couple of big girls, Lacey Weston and Sonia Castle. And Pine Ridge took it to Dell Rapids and ended up winning the game.

And so, 20 years later after the first girl’s championship, Pine Ridge Lady Thorpes win the championship. Christian Janis was obviously a big, big factor in that.

Those are two girls.

MIKE: Before we wrap up give me a couple of the best boys that you’ve had the chance to cover.

TOM: Willie White, who helped lead his team Pine Ridge, a 26-0 season, 1987. They played Lennox in the state championship game. The previous year with Willie White and George Bettelyoun and them had lost in double overtime  in the semi-finals and they ended up taking 3^rd place that year. They came back the next year with most of their entire team intact. And they ran through the season 23 and 0. They won the region, then they went to state, and they ended up in the state championship game with Lennox.

Willie White was just a solid, post up player. He was agile. He could move. He could jump. And mid-way through the third quarter, they are down 8 points to Lennox, and no one who had followed Pine Ridge that year was worried. They just turned it on and ended up winning that State Championship by 6 or 7 points.. But Willie White definitely had to stand out.

Jess Hart  is another one. In the semi-final game up in the Civic Center, he scored 48 points in the overtime game against DeSmet. They ended up losing in overtime after he fouled out. Jess Hart was just a fantastic player.

So those are some players that stand out, boys from here. There are others. But, like you said, we’re running out of time.

MIKE:  How much longer are you going to keep doing this?

TOM: Well, you know,  it’s a little harder now because in August I was diagnosed with MS. And so I have not walked since April of last year. So that means it’s been almost 15 months now since I’ve walked. I’ve been in a wheelchair. So it makes it harder to get around.

But, with help to get me in and out of the building and so forth, I’ve still been able to broadcast a very, very busy schedule. And, so, to say when?  I can’t say when. I mean, I kid people now, my voice is still strong, my mind’s still working, it’s the support structure that’s breaking down. So, right now, I don’t see the end. I’m going to keep going as long as I can