By GEORGE ROGERS
of The Gazette
The ceiling beams in the Emerson gym were low, and if you arched your shot too high the ball might hit one of them. This was where Stevens Point high school basketball teams played until 1938.
Emerson was built in 1922 to relieve crowding. Now it is apparently headed for demolition because of structural problems.
Until well into the 20th century the majority of youths didn't attend school beyond eighth grade, and high school classes typically had 50 or fewer students. But times were changing, and the picturesque old high school built in 1892 on Clark Street, between Reserve Street and East Avenue, became too small. So an addition - actually, a separate building - was constructed and connected to it with a passageway.
The old building eventually became the Vocational School and stood until the early 1960s, when Mid-State Technical College on Michigan Avenue was built to replace it.
The 1922 addition, the building that now appears destined for demolition, gave the school district more classrooms and something it had never had before - an auditorium. It was used for plays, concerts and meetings long after Emerson ceased to be a high school, because its replacement, P.J. Jacobs, had no auditorium.
Jacobs, now a junior high, opened in 1938. N.E. (Doc) Masterson, who died in December 2000 at the age of 98, was School Board president during construction and he often spoke of the bargain the community got because P.J. Jacobs was built during the Depression with few local dollars. A lot of federal job-creation money went into it.
After P.J. Jacobs opened, Emerson became a junior high, then an elementary school and finally the city's alternative high school until it was closed last year.
Bill Siebert attended Emerson and was a member of the last high school basketball team to play in its gym - a small one of the type often referred to as a crackerbox. Siebert, who became the city of Stevens Point's comptroller-treasurer, recalls that spectators watched from a balcony as well as from bleachers along the court.
Members of the 1938 team, besides Siebert, were Howen Peterson, Henry Yulga, Leonard Simonis, Jim Cashin, Lawrence Jonas, Marvin Hansmann, John Kurszeski, Harold (Dizzy) Moss, Dave Pfiffner and Willard Schlice. Lavern (Tuffy) Moss was student manager. Surviving, besides Siebert, are Jonas, who became a Catholic priest, Simonis, Hansmann and Pfiffner. Siebert is the only one who still lives here.
Harry Ringdahl was the coach and Allen Bostad, later principal of P.J. Jacobs High, was assistant coach.
Although they never attended classes at P.J. Jacobs, the 1938 students had their graduation program there, and the basketball team concluded its season in the Jacobs gym. It played there for the first time on Feb. 25, 1938, losing to Wausau, 32-29. Fans thronged to see the new facility and the crowd of 2,000 was said to be the largest at an indoor event in the city's history.
Basketball was different then. The rules made it low-scoring, and 25 points or so might be enough to win a game.
The 1938 team competed in the state tournament in Madison but lost in the first round to Wausau, 26-17. Wausau went on to win the Class A title. (The 1937 team had a similar fate. It, too, went to the state tournament, losing in the second round to Beloit, which won the state championship.)
Exner Menzel, a sophomore, was a member of Stevens Point's B team most of the 1938 season but was brought up to the varsity late in the year. He didn't make the trip to Madison because he broke his collarbone in the team's final pre-tournament game, a 21-13 win here over Eau Claire. In 1947, after World War II, Menzel was a starter on the last University of Wisconsin-Madison basketball team to win a Big Ten Conference championship.
Officers of the class of 1938 at Emerson were John Kurszeski, president; Douglas Loomis, vice president; Ruth Butler, secretary; and Bob Dunn, treasurer. Editor-in-chief of the Tattler, the school annual, was Bob Lampman, who became a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and gained national renown as an economist.
The high school principal was Joseph Kraus and the superintendent of schools was Paul M. Vincent, who later served as mayor of Stevens Point.
Today, the parking lot at Stevens Point Area Senior High School is filled with students' and teachers' cars. Siebert said when he was a student at Emerson, no students, except a few farm kids, drove to school. Even most of the teachers walked.