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Thursday,
March 13, 2008
In
1930, When Newton High Came to the State Basketball Tournament
Albuquerque
Journal Staff Writer
Study
all the maps and atlases and Google Earths you want. You won't find
this place. But almost 80 years ago, folks who knew their New Mexico
basketball knew the location well.
In
1930, Newton, without a town, a gym, or even a mascot, showed up at
the State High School Basketball Championships in Albuquerque.
The
Newton boys, raw-boned farm kids, didn't win the title. Even so, the
team's presence is a reminder of what the annual spectacle is about:
being there.
Just
shy of 96, Travis Wood is one of the oldest living athletes to have
participated in the state basketball tournament.
He
played on the school's dirt courts and now resides in
Roy, 25 miles
south.
"You
had to watch the ball, 'cause the wind could really blow it 'round
out there," Wood says.
Only
ghosts remain
All
these years later, Newton is mostly forgotten. There is only
emptiness where the school once stood, at the bottom of Colfax
County, 20 miles east of Springer.
There
never was a community; only a few houses. Newton School, which
usually had about 60 students, closed its high school in 1937. The
elementary school hung on until the mid-1950s.
There's nothing left of the school's basketball court. It sat
outdoors and was all-dirt. There were two courts, in fact, and
neither ever had nets.
In
1930, Wood's senior year, he lined up as a rangy guard. " 'bout
6-11/2," he says. "Least I used to be."
Farming toughened him, for dryland agriculture on the eve of the
Dust Bowl and the Great Depression called for hardiness. Even
playing basketball in Newton required a special determination.
"Come
winter," says Wood, "we rolled up these big balls of snow offa the
court, like you was making a snowman."
Inviting place to settle
This
was homesteading country, as were many places across the high plains
of northeast New Mexico.
One
newcomer, Charles Thomas Hutchison, arrived from Arkansas about
1920, with his wife, two sons and a whole lot of hope.
Tom
Hutchison, who hadn't been to college, farmed a quarter-section and
became the first principal of Newton School. Though he had never
played basketball, he saw the game as good exercise.
Hutchison began rounding up any boy of any age to play. He even
recruited his younger brother, Floran, back in Arkansas, to join the
group.
Newton was soon beating district foes from bigger towns such as
Raton, Springer and Dawson.
More
impressive, Newton regularly achieved those victories on the road.
After all, few opponents or fans wanted to venture to Newton's dirt
court for a game in the cold and with no place to sit.
Eventually Newton gained a reputation, if never a mascot. An
enduring story is that one Newton team journeyed to New Mexico
Normal School, now New Mexico Highlands University, and whipped a
squad of Las Vegas college boys.
In
March 1930, Newton experienced its final moment of basketball glory.
"I
was almost 18, and it was my first trip to Albuquerque," says Wood,
settling on the front porch of his clapboard house in Roy.
Neither Wood's hearing nor his knees work well these days, but
otherwise, he says, "I'm still vertical."
The
team traveled to state that year in a Model-T truck, outfitted with
a box atop the bed, and warmed back there by a jury-rigged exhaust
pipe.
Says
Wood, "It was dirt roads the whole way."
The
team stopped the first night at a hotel in Santa Fe, where it toured
the Governor's Mansion. The next day, with Tom Hutchison at the
wheel, the Newton truck tackled La Bajada, the highway's daunting
incline.
"There was cars scattered all up and down that hill," remembers
Wood. "I saw one fella get out and pull a gun and shoot his car."
In
Albuquerque, the Newton boys checked into rooms above Central
Avenue's Liberty Cafe, where they took their meals. All games that
year were played at Carlisle Gym on the UNM campus, another trip by
dirt road.
In
the first round of the 16-team tournament, Newton slipped past the
Menaul Panthers in overtime, 34-32.
Perhaps irritated that an Albuquerque squad lost to a bunch of
hayseeds, Dan Burrows, an Albuquerque Tribune writer, called Menaul
"considerably the better team."
Back
then, there were no class distinctions at state: Goliaths competed
with Davids. In the quarterfinals, Newton went up against the
Albuquerque High Bulldogs. The biggest school prevailed against the
smallest, 40-12.
After
the game, Newton drove straight home, not stopping at Santa Fe.
"Was
we sad?" Wood repeats the question. "Heck no. We got to go to
Albuquerque. We had a great time."
End of
the road
Soon
after that game, Newton, beset by drought and a busted economy,
began its decline.
Tom
Hutchison moved on, first to coaching and teaching jobs in area
schools. In time, those little schools closed, too.
Meanwhile, Tom's son,
Woodrow Hutchison, who had attended elementary
school in Newton, and Woody's uncle, Floran, went on to became
basketball stars at New Mexico Normal. Each later had fine coaching
careers— Woody in Sacramento, Calif., and Floran mostly in
Farmington.
After
he left New Mexico, for a while Tom Hutchison baked pies in
California. Eventually he returned to Arkansas, where he died in
1972 at age 82.
After
the state tournament, Travis Wood found part-time work delivering
mail and hauling coal. When World War II began, he joined the Navy.
He saw three years of duty.
In
1952, Wood moved to Roy, working another mail route and rearing,
with his wife, Clara, 92, a former Newton School girl, two children.
The
couple have been married 71 years.
"Self-reliance" is what Gary Wood says his father gained from living
in Newton. "Those people up there were just grubbin' it out."
"Tenacity," adds Gary's sister, Cheryl Scott. "Dad always talks
about how on wet days they would wrap their hand-me-down shoes in
burlap bags in hopes of getting to school without soaked feet."
"Basketball," is what Travis Wood remembers best of that time.
"Basketball taught us to believe in ourselves."
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1930 Newton Basketball Team |
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