Right Down The Line (2-13-57)

Tonight may be the last high school basketball game for the Dundee Bulldogs. The cagers of Coach Jack Reese, who have had one of the worst seasons in many years, dropped its opening game in the county tournament and will meet Tuscarawas in a consolation fracas tonight. If they lose they will end the season. For Dundee fans it may be the last time they will see their high school fielding an athletic team of any kind since it is almost definite now that Dundee will consolidate with Sugarcreek next year and will go under the name of the latter. The consolidation project also has Baltic included, but officials of that school signified that it does not wish to join Sugarcreek now, but eventually will. A new school will be constructed in the vicinity of Sugarcreek when the program is fully completed. At the beginning of the season Coach Reese submitted to us a roster listing ten players including four freshmen, three sophomores and three juniors as his varsity. Almost as soon as the season opened he lost two of those players, whittling his squad to only eight. Before long two more fell by the wayside and he had only six players. Adding one more player midway in the season the mentor finished out the schedule with seven players. Many times three or four players would foul out in a rough contest and Coach Reese would have only three or four players to finish out the game. Several coaches pulled his players until both teams had an even number. In one game both teams finished the game with only two players on each team. Almost every team the Bulldogs played this year ran rough-shod over them in easy fashion. The only team the Bulldogs whipped was United Local of Hanoverton, and that in an overtime. The game with Tuscarawas, which is undergoing a rebuilding year, was very close, but other than those two games the rest were lopsided. Monday night Dundee was slated to take another one on the chin when it met Port Washington in the opening of the Tuscarawas County Class A Tournament. But something went wrong and the Bulldog cagers refused to lay down and be trampled on. Five of the gamest, determined boys that probably ever were listed as underdogs took the floor Monday night and turned in sterling performances threatening in the early stages of the game, to post one of the biggest upsets in the school's cage history. Fans were on the Bulldogs side all the way and when the little lads held a 17-12 lead at the end of the first quarter bedlam broke in Memorial Hall. Port, a little ruffled by those upstarts, finally realized their plight and settled down to breeze to an 85-53 victory. Although the Riders won by 32 points and led by a big margin midway in the third quarter the Dundee players never gave up. We would like to congratulate the Dundee players on their fine display of the will to win and fighting spirit. Something that is lacking in many, larger communities. We feel that if we never see another basketball game, which is very unlikely, we'll always remember that night when just plan old spirit spurred a team that lacked personnel and everything going with a good cage team into putting up a heart-warming battle.
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Wednesday, February 13, 1957
The Daily Reporter
Dover, Ohio