The book is, as the title states, about small high schools and their success in state tournament basketball competition. Sterrett spends three chapters talking about the highly-successful Roland Rockets and their state tournament run in 1951, '52 and '53. Gary Thompson, the former Iowa State All-American, played on all three of those Roland teams.
Sterrett, a retired educator and coach, said he decided to write the book because of the Milan (Ind.) upset of Muncie, Ind., in the 1954 Indiana state tournament. That game generated the popular movie "Hoosiers."
When it beat Muncie for the 1954 Indiana state championship, Milan was a school of 180 students and Muncie was considerably larger with more than 5,000 students.
"I always considered (Milan's win) not nearly as big an upset as some of the things that happened in Iowa," Sterrett said.
The most popular of those upsets occurred during the days when only one state basketball champion was crowned at the Iowa high school basketball tournament.
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Danbury, with two starters gone from its 1947 team, returned to the state tournament in 1948 and knocked off Atlantic and Des Moines Dowling before losing to Sioux City Central.
Manning, another western Iowa community, became the state tournament's Cinderella team in 1948 and lived up to the billing with an upset of the Davenport Blue Devils.
Moorhead and Winfield, two more small Iowa communities, sent teams to the state tournament semifinals in 1949 and Winfield and Dinsdale finished third and fourth, respectively, in the 1950 state tournament.
Sterrett writes that fundamentally sound basketball and good shooting techniques were instrumental in Roland's state tournament runs in the early 1950s. In 1951, the Rockets beat Hull, Waterloo West and Des Moines East to reach the finals where they lost to Davenport.
Roland's 1952 state tournament team defeated Readlyn and Spencer before losing to Keokuk in the semifinals. The Rockets then dropped a 48-46 overtime decision to Dinsdale in the consolation game.
In 1953, Roland got by Earling St. Joseph and Clarence before losing to eventual state champion Clinton St. Mary in the semifinals. Clinton then beat Roland in the consolation game.
Sterrett notes several reasons why small schools are, on occasion, able to upset much larger schools. Years ago, long before the Internet and Nintendo, there wasn't much to do in small communities, so many youth athletes spent time honing their skills at open gyms. And, during the games themselves, if a small school was fundamentally sound enough to get a lead in a game, any kind of lead, it was able to sit on that lead and let the clock wind down.
And when the trailing team committed fouls late in the game, the team in possession of the ball was given the option of shooting free throws or simply retaining possession by taking the ball out of bounds. Almost always, that team chose to take the ball out of bounds, maintain possession and let the clock run.
Sterrett conducted a survey of all 50 states and the District of Columbia and learned that only the District of Columbia and the state of Delaware now have one-class state basketball tournaments. All others have gone to at least two classes if not more.
"Kentucky and Indiana both held on further than they should have, but both have a history of tremendous small-school upsets," Sterrett said.
While he's not really an advocate of the one-class system, Sterrett said the class system has hurt attendance at state tournaments.
"It's almost like attending an opera, the excitement is just not there, the attendance is just not there," Sterrett said.
He said he would like to see some kind of post-tournament competition in which the class champions play each other to determine one state champion.
Sterrett's book is available from Trafford Publishing at www.trafford.com.
Dick Kelly can be reached at (515) 232-2161, Ext. 355, or dkelly@amestrib.com.
