I'm writing another book. This one will feature interviews I did over the years while working at WFTM radio.
I am listening to a lot of the interviews on cds and cassette tapes. One cassette tape that caught my attention today was a WFTM Sports Speak basketball show that the late Oscar Day and I hosted on February 17, 1988. I have transcribed portions of interviews from the show, one with Mason County coach Allen Feldhaus and one with Maysville coach Mike Reitz.
Weddle: Again, Clark County tonight; the doubleheader on Saturday night for you, coach.
Feldhaus: That's right, Danny. And it's that time of the year, Danny. Really, our basketball team matured late. But, you know, I know I'm having fun now. I think I already made up my mind, I was telling the kids today, whether we win or lose tonight, I don't care how bad we play, we're going to take a day off tomorrow. And I think when you get to that frame of mind as a coach, I think maybe it's an indication things are going a little better for you and you feel a little better about your basketball team. I know like last year, we started doing this in early January, but we haven't been able to do that with this group, so, I only hope that we go and play hard tonight. You know, so many little intangibles that takes place in a ballgame. No. 1 is we can't let them intimidate us on the boards, and I think that'll be a good test on Tony (Ring) and Trevor (Pollitt) inside on the boards and see what we can do with them, And No. 2, they're going to throw a lot of multiple defenses at us and see how our guards react to that and whether they can get us into proper offenses. So, it'll be a good ball game for us and I'll be disappointed, you know, if we don't play with them to a certain extent. I'm not saying we should go out and beat 'em because they have a couple of players back from last year with the experience and this type of thing, but I feel like we're far enough along we should be able to compete, Danny.
Day: Your team is undefeated on the home court this season and playing some pretty good teams at home too.
Reitz: Oscar, that was one of our goals going into this season, that we wanted to be undefeated at home. And we had so few home basketball games that that might not have been a great feat, but I think anytime that, you know, you can beat some good teams on your home floor you've really done something. And I can't say enough about these seniors that we have. And these sophomores they've really done a good job for us this year and most of 'em have really developed and playing to their potential right now. And I just hope the kids have in their head, which I'm sure they do, that they wanna go out and play as hard as they can until that final night. And I just feel like if our kids do play well and play hard that we could do some damage in the tournament, But like I said last night on the radio show, Oscar, these kids have had a great year and we all can't forget out there that they are just 16, 17 year old young men, and sometimes you really don't know what's going to go on that floor even though everybody seems to think that they know how they should play each night. And a lot of things you can't control like injuries and some nights your shots don't fall, but these kids have had a great year and I'm proud of 'em and no matter what happens down the road, you can't take away from these kids what they've accomplished this year and especially when you have Pat Moore and Chris Wilburn and Mike Case. All three of those have joined the thousand point club at Maysville High School. And there's not that many players that are on that club. I think Punk Griffin could probably come up with the exact number, but the way I looked at it, there's probably 15 or 20 people in all the years that Maysville has had basketball are on that club and we have three kids this year that have finally made it and I just think that's a great, great success story for those three kids: Mike Case, Pat Moore and Chris Wilburn. And JD Simpson, my other senior, he's just improved 100% and we just can't get along without JD right now because he's playing so well for us.
Those shows were a lot of fun. St. Patrick coach Lex Turner was a frequent guest, but he was not there that day.
Maysville went on to win the 39th District and 10th Region tournaments. It turned out to be the Bulldogs' last trip to the state tournament.
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