courtesy photo: Coach Jack Wood (left to right), Denny Richters, Allen Ellis, Dick Greenwood and John Rhodes attended the Nebraska High School Hall of Fame ceremony as the 1956-1957 Utica High School basketball team, of which they were a part, was inducted in a Sept. 23 ceremony.

by Theodore Wiesehan

    In 1957 Dwight Eisenhower began his second term as U.S. president, Ford Motor Company introduced the doomed Edsel, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, into space and the Utica High School basketball team went undefeated, winning its first state championship.
     On the fiftieth anniversary of its triumphant season, the 1956-1957 Utica basketball team was inducted into the Nebraska High School Hall of Fame in a Sept. 23 ceremony.
     The team, coached by first-year Wesleyan graduate Jack Wood, finished the season 25-0, winning the Class D State Championship with a 50-42 victory over Center in the finals.
     "We predicted (a state championship)," point guard Dick Greenwood, Utica, said. "Of course all teams do, you know."
     "We anticipated (a state championship) because we should have been there in '56 also," guard Allen Ellis, Lincoln, added. "We lost in the regionals by a couple points to a team (Palmyra) that should not have even been close."
     Indeed, Utica's success on the court during the 1955-1956 season foreshadowed great things to follow. Lyle Buell, a first-year coach fresh from Nebraska Wesleyan led a record of just one loss - their season-ending defeat at the regional tournament.
     Wood replaced Buell - who was drafted into the military - for the 1956-1957 season and fine-tuned the already talented team.
     "(Wood) taught them man-to-man defense, which they were a little reluctant to use because there was success the year before," Denny Richters, Utica, said.
     The team's only loss the previous year had occurred in the Nebraska Wesleyan gym. Wood recognized that the Utica zone defense, so successful in their cramped gym, would falter against teams with outside shooters in larger gyms.
     "That was a really small gym," Richters, who played as a reserve on the team, said of the Utica facility. "The circles were within about eight inches of each other. ...And (1955-1956) we played that zone with really good players and good size. Well, in that crackerbox, who could do anything because you had these five good athletes that were pretty good-sized and that. But you get into Wesleyan, and we hit a team that just shot lights out from about 22, 24 feet out. Well, hell, you couldn't get 24 feet away (in the Utica gym), you know."
     "They built this new gymnasium (now Utica's old gym) and we were the last year in the old one," Greenwood said. "And it was a crackerbox."
     Wood perfected the team's man-to-man defense and worked to acclimate the players to larger courts. He set up practices at Henderson and Brainard to take advantage of the larger gyms and scheduled all of the team's games away.*
     Utica's tournament play demonstrated their defensive strength. The team held top-ranked Western to just 13 points per half in the regional finals, limited opponents in the regional and state tournament games to an average of 31 points per game.
     "Defense is what made that team super," Richters said. "It could cover anybody and could match up with any team."
     "(Center) had a guy named (Jim) McGill. He was six (feet) five (inches) in the middle, and they had a guard named Sealer that shot and made 27 points the night before. The papers said, 'Well, Utica can't stop Sealer and McGill,' you know. Dick Greenwood, now he had seven points in the finals and people say, 'Well that isn't that much.' Sealer had one (point). So (Greenwood) took 26 points away from the guy."
     While many teams look to a single scoring leader to pull through in clutch situations, Utica's offense was spread across the team.
     "There was no star," Ellis said. "It was, you know, five guys playing together who got along really well. One night it was one person (leading scoring), the next night it was another person. It was just a team."
     "The first five were really solid as a rock," Richters said. "And the others...if they would have got to a couple of us on the bench...our bench was a little suspect."
     Richters also hailed Wood's leadership as key to the team's success. He recalled an instance just prior to the opening game of the regional tournament against Brainard. Center Dennis Semin was unable to play due to a sprained ankle and power forward Roger Reiling had the flu.
     "Coach sat down myself and a sophomore, and he said, 'you'll start for so-and-so, and you'll start for so-and-so,'" Richters said. "I look back at the pictures and I almost go into a sweat, cause I'm thinking, I was not...I mean the fall-off from one of the starters to me was a long ways. And yet when I left the locker room I thought, 'Hey, I can do this.' My coach had to be petrified, but he didn't show it."
     Of the five starters - Dennis Winkelman, Greenwood, Ellis, Reiling and Semin - only Semin was recognized for 1957 all-state honors. He later went on to play for Nebraska Wesleyan.
     Utica won another state championship in 1963, when Semin's younger brother led the then-Class C team to a 59-57 victory over Gibbon in the finals, but it never produced another undefeated team like that magical 1956-1957 season.
     "I just feel lucky that I got to watch," Richters said of the season. "I feel much better about that team than they do. I mean, they feel good, but I don't know if they realize how good they were. I think you could have played 100 games and nobody's going to beat them guys."
    *According to Richters, Wood believes the team played all their games away that season, but the players recall one game in the Utica gym.