In this photo from the March 23, 1972, issue of the Baker Democrat-Herald, Baker’s Daryl Ross shoots against Corvallis on March 22, 1972. Teammate Craig Erickson (No. 14) looks on.

Editor’s Note: The ceremony to honor the 1972 team, originally set for Friday, Feb. 25, has been postponed until next season.

Half a century on, many of those who were there remember the crowd with particular clarity.

And the cacophony.

No Baker High School sports team had ever played in front of a bigger audience than the Bulldog boys basketball squad did on that Saturday night, March 25, 1972.

And none has in the five decades that have come since.

The organizers of the Class AAA state tournament managed to cram 13,395 spectators into Portland’s Memorial Coliseum.

That’s 729 more people than the listed capacity for the then 12-year-old arena, home to the Portland Trail Blazers, the city’s one-year-old NBA franchise.

It’s also about 90% of the population in Baker County at that time.

Baker Bulldog Basics: 1972 state tournament team

Snapshot of the 1972 Baker boys basketball state tournament team

• Seniors: Daryl Ross, Mike Davis, Dick Sheehy, Craig Erickson, Mark Johnson, Fred Warner Jr.

• Juniors: Randy Daugherty, Greg Sackos, Tim Wood, Wes Morgan

• Sophomore: Rick Scrivner

• Team record: 19-7 (16-6 regular season, 3-1 in state tournament)

State tournament records and accolades

• Ross, first-team all tournament, second in total points with 80, fourth in rebounds with 46

• Davis, third in total rebounds with 49

• Tournament record for fewest fouls in a game — 4 against Sunset

• Single-game record for highest field goal percentage — 65% against Newberg

• Tournament record for four-game field goal percentage — 53.1%

• Team won sportsmanship award for second straight year

This mass of humanity had gathered to watch an improbable — and unusually compelling, due to its many distinct contrasts — state championship basketball game.

There were the Bulldogs from Baker, a small town at the far eastern edge of Oregon, considerably closer to Boise than to Portland.

The farm boys.

All sporting crew cuts more reminiscent of the Eisenhower administration than the Nixon era.

Baker’s longtime coach, Gary Hammond, in his final game before retiring with a lifetime record of 565 wins against 171 losses, insisted on that hairstyle, a precision that mirrored his approach to basketball.

“Hammond ran a pretty tight ship,” said John Heriza, now 90, who was Baker’s assistant coach and replaced Hammond as head coach the next season.

“If you played for Gary Hammond, you didn’t have long hair,” said Mark Johnson, a member of the 1972 team. “And you knew that going in.”

“We looked kind of out of place going to Portland in 1972 with crewcuts,” said Tim Wood, another teammate.

The Bulldogs’ opponents were the top-ranked Jefferson Democrats from Portland, a larger school in a vastly larger city.

The city boys.

Some of their players sported Afros, a more flamboyant look that matched the Democrats’ fast-paced style of basketball, so different from the methodical, ball control strategy that Hammond had honed during his 19 years as the Bulldog coach.

This wasn’t a David vs. Goliath situation, to be sure.

Nor was it even necessarily comparable to the fictional (though based on a true story) Indiana state championship game depicted in the movie “Hoosiers.”

Baker was not a newcomer to the state tournament, despite being one of the smaller schools in Oregon’s AAA division, which included the state’s biggest high schools.

(Today Baker competes at the Class 4A level; the state’s larger high schools are divided into the Class 5A and Class 6A divisions.)

The year before, in 1971, the Bulldogs finished sixth, beating South Salem 39-34 in the first round, losing 39-37 to Grant in the quarterfinals, and beating Medford 58-37 in the consolation round before losing 59-42 to Sunset in the fourth-place game.

Baker finished fifth in 1969 and third in 1966.

“I think one of the things that made Baker successful was that they had been there a few years prior, so they weren’t as much in awe,” said Greg Hammond, Gary’s son and a 1970 BHS graduate who lives near Baker City and played for his dad.

Experience aside, Baker entered the 1972 tournament with a 16-6 record, including two losses to Bend, a team that didn’t even qualify for state.

Baker clinched its tournament berth by routing Mac-Hi 72-52 on March 4 — almost 3 weeks before the tournament started.

Jefferson was 22-1.

The Democrats had three players who went on to play Division I college basketball.

Baker had one — 6-foot-7 post Daryl Ross, who played at Montana State.

That Jefferson was in the championship game was hardly surprising.

But Baker’s appearance — its first in the title game since 1943 — was not expected.

The Democrats had breezed to the championship game by beating Redmond by 31 points, Jesuit by 13 and Klamath Union by 20.

The Bulldogs, meanwhile, started the tournament by falling behind Corvallis before rallying for a 51-45 win propelled by sophomore Rick Scrivner’s 22 points, including nine straight field goals.

After setting a tournament record with 65% field goal shooting in a 64-44 romp over Newberg in the quarterfinals, Baker needed a buzzer-beater from Ross to get past Sunset, 50-49, in the semifinals.

And surely it was this litany of contrasts — enrollments, hairstyles, paths to the title game — that lured some of those 13,395 fans to the Coliseum on that March night.

As sometimes happens, all those differences combined to produce the kind of game that people remember vividly 50 years later.

Baker led most of the contest.

Jefferson rallied late in the fourth quarter to win, 59-52.

Yet even though that group of Bulldogs didn’t match the 1938 or 2007 squads in bringing home a state championship, the 1972 team — and tournament — remain milestones in local sports and community history.

And it’s why some of those players, and others associated with that team, had planned to gather again, in the much more modest confines of the Baker High School gym, on Friday evening, Feb. 25.

(Editor’s Note: After the press deadline for the Feb. 24 issue, it was announced that the ceremony would be postponed until next season, with the hopes of scheduling it during a game that would likely have a larger attendance than Friday’s nonleague game.)

To be honored for their accomplishments.

And to remember those who can’t join them.

Gary Hammond died on April 26, 2008, at Pendleton. He was 88.

Two starters on the 1972 team — Ross and Mike Davis, the top two scorers — have also passed away.

Ross died Jan. 7, 2015, at age 60 from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Davis died Jan. 4, 2016, at age 61.

“I’m glad we can do this for Daryl and Mike,” said Dick Sheehy, who was a starter on the 1972 team and lives in Beaverton.

Several of the other players still live in Baker City, said Randy Daugherty, who has been working to organize the reunion and celebration.

Daugherty was a junior starter on the 1972 team. But he broke his leg against Bend with four games left in the regular season and had to watch Baker’s four tournament games from the bench. He was replaced in the backcourt by Scrivner.

“It was frustrating,” Daugherty said. “You don’t get those opportunities very often.”

Another starter, Dave Mark, was lost for disciplinary reasons early in March of 1972.

Heriza, the assistant coach, also lives in Baker City.

So do the team’s statistician, Gerry Steele, and manager, Verl Cote, along with some of the five cheerleaders — Belinda Gutridge, Debbie Colton, Teri Guymon, Toni Justus and Cindy Curtis.

“It’s surprising how many people from the team still live here,” Daugherty said. “We should have a big representation (at the ceremony).”

Daugherty said it has been “very rewarding” to compile a history of the 1972 team, an exercise that has revived happy memories of the camaraderie and victories that he shared with his teammates.

“It was a special year in the history of Baker High School sports,” he said.

The team

Scrivner was just a sophomore in 1972, and he never expected to finish the season in front of nearly as many people as lived then in Baker County.

But after playing three games in the Coliseum, including a crowd of slightly more than 10,000 in the semifinal win over Sunset, he was much less intimidated by the sea of faces.

“It was eye-opening at the beginning, but by the fourth game I was more comfortable,” said Scrivner, a longtime Baker City resident who is living in Utah while recovering from cancer. His son, Drew, will drive him to Baker City for Friday’s ceremony.

Scrivner had watched games before at the Coliseum. As a freshman — ineligible to play on the varsity — Scrivner saw Baker play in the 1971 tournament.

He imagined himself on the court.

“As a freshman I yearned to be on that team,” he said.

Scrivner, in common with his 1972 teammates, uses one word more than any other to describe not only that team, but also Hammond’s coaching philosophy.

Discipline.

“I remember the team camaraderie and what it’s like to play on a disciplined ball team,” Scrivner said.

And discipline was not limited to the court.

Hammond also required players to wear coats and ties on game days.

“It was expected of you,” Scrivner said.

Greg Hammond said his dad taught him and all his other players that discipline was “not one thing, but it’s about many things you do that have a cumulative effect — hair, clothes, how you act. A whole bunch of little things.”

Greg was attending Oregon State University in 1972.

When it looked late in the season as though Baker would probably play Corvallis in the first round of the state tournament, Greg said his dad asked him to scout the team, which he did.

Although the level of excitement in Baker rose with each successive tournament win, the town was hardly uninterested even before the Bulldogs headed for Portland.

A lunch banquet on March 16, 1972, drew 167 people.

The tournament

Playing four games in as many days is a grueling schedule for any team.

But it was especially so for Baker.

The starting five — Ross, Davis, Scrivner, Sheehy and Craig Erickson — played almost the entirety of the first three games.

And in the championship game, Gary Hammond didn’t substitute once.

Scrivner, the lone sophomore playing with four seniors, said it was difficult for him, at times, to be on the floor while his older teammates spent most or all of the game on the bench.

“That bothered me more as the years went by, all the work they put in,” he said.

Sheehy had similar feelings.

“We had a good bunch of guys,” he said. “All the guys on the bench that didn’t play much, they worked just as hard as the rest of us did.”

In the opening game against Corvallis before 5,937 fans on March 22, 1972, Baker rebounded from an 11-6 deficit after the first quarter to win 51-45.

Scrivner, making his state tournament debut, wasn’t intimidated. He led the Bulldogs with 22 points. Davis had 10, Ross 8, Sheehy 7 and Erickson 4 points.

The next day, March 23, 1972, in a quarterfinal against Newberg, Baker set the tournament record for field goal percentage, making 26 of 40 shots — 65%.

And this time the team’s star, Ross, more than lived up to his reputation as one of the state’s top players.

Ross, who was Baker’s leading scorer with an average of 21.4 points per game entering the tournament, had 28 points on 11 of 15 shooting from the field. Davis and Scrivner had 13 points each, Sheehy had 8 and Erickson 2.

In a semifinal game against Sunset on March 24, 1972, before 10,080 fans, Ross again led Baker with 31 points. Davis had 13 points, Scrivner 4 and Sheehy 2.

Gary Hammond told a reporter that Ross was the best player he had coached.

Heriza said Ross was a traditional “back to the basket” center, meaning he established position near the hoop, took a pass from a teammate and then looked for a good shot.

Heriza said Ross was a highly skilled player who had an array of head fakes, spins and other moves that often led to easy baskets.

Heriza, who remains a dedicated basketball fan, compared Ross with Drew Timme, the All-American player at Gonzaga University.

Besides the four memorable games in the Coliseum, Greg Hammond said he remembers vividly how enthusiastic the Baker fans were who had driven 300 miles to watch their team.

He recalls how there were so many Baker fans staying in the Holiday Inn in Portland that they were able to spell out the words “Baker Bulldogs” with a single letter in each room window.

The championship game

Coach Hammond’s methodical offense would never be so vital to execute as against the swift Jefferson squad.

“If we tried to run with somebody like Jefferson we probably would have lost by 30,” Sheehy said.

Scrivner agreed.

“We had some big guys, with Daryl and Mike, but we couldn’t run like Jefferson,” he said. “We couldn’t have won by running with them.”

“They wanted to run and we wouldn’t give them the ball,” said Tim Wood, a member of the team.

Sheehy remembers that Jefferson showed off its athletic abilities early in the game.

“They were by far the best team we had seen, talent wise,” Sheehy said.

Davis went up for a jumper, Baker’s first shot, and Jefferson’s Charles Channel, who led all scorers in the championship game with 19 points, swatted the ball into the crowd.

Not that the ball had to travel far to reach the spectators.

Sheehy said fans lined the court, so close that players “couldn’t hardly get out of bounds without hitting somebody.”

In 1972 the state tournament took place during spring break, so Greg Hammond, who was a student at Oregon State University, was able to watch all of Baker’s games at the Coliseum.

He remembers that when his dad came out of the locker room and walked toward the bench before the start of the championship game, three Jefferson fans were sitting on Baker’s bench.

Whether this was a small bit of gamesmanship or not, Gary Hammond simply walked up and greeted the fans, saying “I’m glad to see at least three of you are going to root for Baker High School.”

Greg tells the story with a laugh.

“They got up and left,” he said. “There was no animosity.”

As important as controlling the ball on offense was, Heriza believes Baker’s defensive prowess was at least as important, both in getting the Bulldogs to the championship game and in their chance to stun the Democrats.

“We took them out of their ballgame,” he said. “We didn’t give them a fast break.”

The game started the way many people in the Coliseum probably expected.

Jefferson scored the first 6 points.

But Baker didn’t panic.

The Bulldogs rallied, took the lead early in the second quarter and maintained it for most of the game. Baker led 28-24 at halftime and twice in the third quarter pushed the advantage to 7 points, the last time at 40-33.

Jefferson regained the lead at 47-46 with 5 minutes left, but Scrivner scored 4 straight points to give Baker its final lead, 50-49 with about 3:40 left.

But the Democrats scored 10 of the final 12 points.

Heriza said fatigue was a factor.

With the starting five playing the entire game, that was perhaps inevitable.

“When you play defense that way, you’re going to get tired,” he said.

Johnson, who was a senior, said the Bulldogs couldn’t quite maintain the defensive intensity for the entire 32 minutes.

“When Jefferson went into another gear, we ran out of gas,” he said.

Multiple players also cited as a key factor Jefferson coach Jack Bertell’s decision to switch from a zone defene to man-to-man in the fourth quarter.

Even Baker’s stifling defense wasn’t capable of preventing Jefferson from taking a lot of shots, and the Democrats’ quantity turned out to be more important than the Bulldogs’ quality.

Baker made 21 of 37 field goals, 56.8%.

The Democrats missed more shots — 48 — than Baker attempted.

But despite shooting just 34%, Jefferson had four more field goals.

Missed free throws also hurt Baker, especially in the fourth quarter.

The Bulldogs were 10 of 22 overall, shooting at a lower percentage from the line than they did from the field.

Jefferson was 9 for 14 from the line.

Davis had 17 points to lead Baker. Scrivner had 15 points, Ross 13, Sheehy 4 and Erickson 3 points.

The aftermath

Heriza went on to coach the Baker varsity for the next two seasons, then moved to Pendleton in 1977, where he coached for many years, before returning to Baker City in 2004.

Heriza said the loss to Jefferson in the 1972 championship game was of course disappointing.

“But it wasn’t a calamity by any means,” he said.

Sheehy said his initial reaction was that he wasn’t happy with the second-place trophy.

“It’s kind of like kissing your sister,” he said with a laugh. “We were so close, but it was not very satisfying.”

Over the years, though, he came to appreciate the accomplishment.

“It sure was fun,” Sheehy said. “Coach Hammond got the most out of his players. For a bunch of kids it was a pretty good deal.”

Ann Ross reminisces about her late husband, Daryl

Editor’s Note: Jan Davis, whose husband, Mike, also a key member of the 1972 team, died in 2016, was not available for an interview.

Ann Ross didn’t watch the game that defined her husband’s high school basketball career.

But after being married to Daryl for more than 30 years, she almost felt as if she had been in Portland’s Memorial Coliseum the night of March 25, 1972.

Baker’s 59-52 loss to Jefferson in the state championship game “came up quite a bit” over the decades, Ann Ross said.

But not from Daryl, whom she married in 1979 after meeting him at a rodeo in Burns, where Ann grew up.

“He didn’t talk a whole lot about it,” she said. “He was very humble.”

But while the couple were living in Baker in the 1980s, she said she often talked with people who had fond and vivid memories of the 1972 team and its improbable run at the state tournament.

And when the Rosses moved to Burns in 1989 — where Ann still lives, following Daryl’s death in 2015 — she said she occasionally ran into a Burns resident who had also attended the classic 1972 championship game.

In Burns, Daryl worked for the Bureau of Land Management and coached both of the couple’s daughters, Chelsea and Erin.

Both were accomplished athletes at Burns High School. Chelsea was Class 3A player of the year.

“They definitely got that from their dad,” Ann said with a laugh.

Randy Daugherty, who was a junior teammate of Daryl’s on the 1972 Baker team, said Daryl, despite being a tall and very strong player, was also a “gentle giant.”

“No matter how much he got roughed up, double or triple teamed, he never retaliated,” Daugherty said. “He just took it and kept playing.”

Erin Ross, who is an elementary school teacher, shared her memories of her dad in an email:

“Dad always enjoyed sharing his passion of basketball with us. He spent countless hours teaching us every post play in his arsenal. And although many years have passed since I played at (Burns High School), when I close my eyes, I can still see him standing in the balcony of the High School gym. Camera on a tripod in the northernmost corner, I would glance at him periodically throughout the game, looking for him to advise me on a play.

“I looked forward to the moments when he would stop me before I would go into the locker room to give me some advice, and the conversations that would ensue on the car ride home. I always knew that Dad was seeing what I needed to do and I trusted him implicitly. 

“When I was getting ready to leave for a volleyball camp at BSU my senior year, Dad snuck a letter into my bag. I found it when I arrived and have kept it all these years. In the letter Dad outlined what I should be remembering to do while I was at camp to help me get recruited. My favorite points were: ‘Don’t come home saying, “I didn’t play well at times.”  That is a decision you make at the time you are there.’ The other was, ‘They don’t care how good other people say you are, they want to see it for themselves.’

Chelsea Ross, who is a mental health therapist and career counselor, also wrote about her dad:

“He said that he always gauged himself by his ‘competition and working.’ And I can remember him saying on many occasions that ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing right.’ I truly believe that is the way he lived his life. He fully invested in everything that he did, nothing was done halfway. He worked hard not only at his job, but at everything. Whether that meant having to walk to basketball practice in high school, analyzing team roping video for improvement, or golfing 18 holes after a long day of work, he did it. He was willing to do what it took to be successful and for that reason most of his life he was. 

The one thing that I am still in awe of is his never-ending optimism. How often have we all complained about trivial things like: “It’s too cold, my muscles are sore, or I had a bad day.” It sounds crazy, but in my entire life I never heard him complain, not once. Not when our roof blew off our house, not when he was in pain from breaking several ribs, and not even when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness with no cure.”

— Jayson Jacoby

Greg Hammond, who later coached for 17 years, said his dad was sad to come so close to an epic upset victory, but he also recognized what he and his players had done.

“I think that was a huge accomplishment at the time for a small school like Baker,” Greg Hammond said. “I think (his dad) was very pleased with the kids and the community support. I’m sure he was disappointed that they didn’t quite pull it off.”

Because he was on break from college, Greg was able to return to Baker after the tournament and see how the community greeted the team.

“It was incredible,” he said.

He believes that the level of support contributed to the Oregon School Activities Association’s decision to move the state basketball tournaments for the state’s smallest schools to Baker High School just three years later.

Pull Quote

“I really didn’t understand how excited everyone was in Baker until I got back. It was unbelievable how people would travel back then just to watch a ballgame. Everybody got on board.”

— Rick Scrivner, sophomore on Baker’s 1972 boys basketball team

Scrivner also remembers the crowds that greeted the team members when they returned.

“I really didn’t understand how excited everyone was in Baker until I got back,” he said. “It was unbelievable how people would travel back then just to watch a ballgame. Everybody got on board.”

Sheehy said he occasionally sees one of his rivals from the 1972 game, Jefferson graduate Tony Hopson, who scored 14 points in the championship game.

Sheehy said he also runs into people every now and again who, after hearing that he grew up in Baker, mention the 1972 game, talk about how exciting it was, and ask him if he too remembers.

Invariably, he said, they’re shocked to learn that not only does he remember, but he was on the court for the entire 32 minutes.

Pull Quote

“We had a good bunch of guys. All the guys on the bench that didn’t play much, they worked just as hard as the rest of us did.”

— Dick Sheehy, senior on the 1972 Baker boys basketball team

“I was lucky enough to be on the team,” he said.

Sheehy plans to attend Friday’s ceremony accompanied by his father, Dick Sheehy Sr. of Baker City, who will turn 100 on May 3.

The younger Sheehy said his dad kept the shot chart for Gary Hammond for many years, including during the 1971-72 season. Sheehy figures his father must have attended around 1,000 basketball games.

Tim Wood

Wood, who lives in Baker City and was a junior in 1972, remembers how the combination of Ross, at 6-foot-7, and Davis, 6-foot-4, made for an “enormous presence” in the key.

He also remembers the crowd at the championship game.

“More than three-quarters was from Portland,” Wood said.

Although the Baker players were of course ensconced in a Portland motel throughout the tournament, Wood said he remembered how the contingent of Baker fans grew with each of the four successive games.

By the night of the championship game, Wood said, “I can imagine Baker was a ghost town.”

“It was a very historic moment,” he said. “It was quite an experience.”

Fred Warner Jr.

Warner, a senior on the team, described the atmosphere of the championship game as “pretty amazing, kind of surreal. I enjoyed every bit of it.”

He remembers how many Baker residents were in the crowd, and the celebratory parade and banquet in town after the team returned from Portland.

Mark Johnson

Johnson was a senior who had never gone out for basketball before.

And he had never been to a basketball arena filled with more than 13,000 people.

“I had never been in an environment like that,” said Johnson, who lives in Baker City. “It was pretty exciting. I though, ‘wow, this place is full. This is what a championship game should be.’ ”

He thinks many of the people who made up that record crowd on March 25, 1972, were intrigued by the “contrast of basketball styles” that Baker and Jefferson presented.

Johnson also thinks many fans — at least among those who weren’t rooting for either the Bulldogs or the Democrats — were just plain curious about whether the underdog could upset the Jefferson juggernaut.

“I think that appealed to people,” Johnson said. “We weren’t supposed to beat Sunset. Could Baker pull it off?”

In the end, he said, the fans “got their money’s worth.”

Johnson said that although he naturally has thought at times over the decades about that night, his memories were provoked by two other games, ones that his sons, Kyle and Grant, were involved in.

Kyle was a senior and Grant a sophomore on Baker’s 2005 team, which lost 44-33 to Wilsonville in the Class 4A championship game at Gill Coliseum in Corvallis.

Two years later, in 2007, Grant was a senior who helped lead Baker to the state championship, a 59-45 win over Stayton, also at Gill Coliseum.

Craig Woods coached both the 2005 and 2007 teams. The 2007 state title was Baker’s first in basketball since 1938, when the Bulldogs, coached by George “Stub” Allison beat Amity 27-18 in Salem.

Wes Morgan

“It was a quite a ride for us,” said Morgan, a junior member of the 1972 team who lives near Sumpter. “To end up where we ended up was pretty amazing.”

He noted that Jefferson, in common with many teams from west of the Cascades, had by the early 1970s adopted a fast-paced, “run and gun” style of place.

“We were just absolutely the opposite,” Morgan said. “We didn’t allow those teams to get the momentum going. That was Hammond’s thing — make at least three passes before any shot.”

Morgan said the support from Baker fans was “amazing” both in Portland and when the team returned.

He recalls seeing banners backing the Bulldogs flying from Portland motel room windows.

Greg Sackos

Sackos, a junior in 1972, recalls hearing the joke going around at the time, one that reflected the size of the Baker contingent in the Coliseum for the championship game.

“Will the last person leaving town turn out the lights?”

Pull Quote

“We just had such a good group of guys. It was really a fun thing.”

— Greg Sackos, junior on the 1972 Baker boys basketball team

And while like most jokes that one indulges in exaggeration, Sackos said the number of Baker fans was amazing.

“We had a lot of support from home,” he said.

His most vivid recollection, though, is of the team’s camaraderie.

“We just had such a good group of guys,” Sackos said. “It was really a fun thing.”

Verl Cote

Cote was a senior at BHS and the team’s manager in 1972.

He remembers how team members “just kind of froze” when they walked out of the tunnel into the Coliseum on the night of the championship game and saw the crowd.

“Holy moly — where did all these people come from?” he said.

Cote said that although Jefferson had “great athletes,” he felt that Baker, with its disciplined approach, could compete.

“They just liked to run and gun, but we did frustrate them for the most part,” Cote said. “We just had a couple of crucial turnovers in the final four minutes and the momentum just kind of shifted a little bit. It’s a disappointment when you lose the championship, but it was a great season.”

Cote said one of his favorite memories from the 1972 tournament involved a bunch of kids at a Portland grade school.

Baker stayed at the Knickerbocker Motel, and before each game they walked a few blocks to the school — Cote doesn’t recall its name — for a brief practice.

Each time, he said, a group of kids showed up to watch.

They didn’t know anything about Baker, Cote said.

“But they knew who Jefferson was.”

Cheerleaders’ memories

Baker High School’s five cheerleaders, in addition to rooting on the Bulldogs at the 1972 state tournament, watched each of Baker’s four thrilling games, culminating in the championship game on Saturday, March 25, in a filled-beyond-capacity Portland Memorial Coliseum.

Be (Gutridge) Tiedemann

The crowd, even 50 years later, still stands out in Tiedemann’s memories.

“It was the most people we’d ever been in front of – it just echoed,” she said.

She was one of two juniors on the cheerleading squad. One cheer, she said, drew boos from the opposing crowd.

“Teri (Guymon, now Swanson, the head cheerleader) said ‘just keep smiling,’ ” Tiedemann said.

And she focused on familiar faces from home.

“People actually got in their cars, drove and stayed,” she said. “The community support was amazing.”

But mostly she remembers the team’s path to the state championship.

“It was surreal – this is what hard work does. They had to keep winning to get there,” she said. “We were such the underdog.”

Debbie (Colton) Hampton

Hampton also remembers the vast sea of faces filling the arena.

“I remember feeling so small in this huge place,” she said. “But I think the whole city of Baker was in the same hotel. It gave us a sense of camaraderie — we were so proud of our school, and our town.”

And she still has solid reminders of that game.

“I actually still have my pom-poms,” she said with a laugh.

Cindy Curtis

Curtis was a senior. Although the experience was “surreal,” she said Baker stayed humble throughout the experience.

“The team, in my opinion, was very humble,” she said. “Everyone worked so hard — Daryl (Ross) had such an incredible work ethic and was one of the kindest people on the planet.”

Humble — but happy about the path to the state championship.

“It was an incredible time,” she said. “It was such an ego boost for the entire school.”

Toni (Justus) Goss

Goss still has a folder full of clippings from that year of basketball — newspaper stories and photos detailing the experience.

“I have a whole scrapbook,” she said. “It was amazing.”

She remembers the crowd too — and feeling a bit out of place.

“It was huge, and they talked about our team being the country boys because they had short hair.”

Teri (Guymon) Swanson

Swanson, a senior, was the head cheerleader, or Song Queen.

She still has her pom-poms from that 1972 season.

“It was just a wonderful time in our life,” she said. “It was one of the best things in my life to be a part of. It gives me the chills just thinking about it.”

The cheerleaders, she said, traveled to the boys’ away games throughout the season, and to the state playoffs — along with most of the town, it seemed.

“Everybody had the Bulldog spirit,” she said. “The support of the town and the school was something else.”

— Lisa Britton

“It was a special year in the history of Baker High School sports.”

— Randy Daugherty, a junior on the 1972 Baker boys basketball team