Amboy Dukes shot up the town in '49

By J. Olson

About the time that John Wayne was on his way to top billing at the theater, Rhinelander had five Dukes of their own who were outshooting everyone and dominating local sports headlines.

In 1949 that five young guys met at the memorial building in Rhinelander and decided to form a basketball team. None of them had experience on an organized basketball team.

"Back then, in high school, the coach had to ask you to join the team," said Delore Deau, who would play forward.

Lack of experience doesn't stop the young so they traveled ahead and tried to secure a sponsorship.

"If I remember right, it cost $15 for each team member to join the league," said Vern Stein, who would play center.

Nobody would sponsor them.

Memories fade as to where the money came from exactly, other than jobs at the A&P or setting pins at area bowling alleys. They had uniforms, but no one remembers where they came from.

"We played with some old uniforms picked up from somewhere," said Deau.

The team name came from a book Stein was reading called The Amboy Dukes. He showed the book to the other members and they agreed to the name.

"It was about a gang of boys in New York," said Keith Tober, a guard on the team. "We thought, ‘Boy, that sounds pretty keen.'"

Keith Tober, Delore Deau, LaVern Stein, Jimmy Nelson and Ernie Cronk, became the Amboy Dukes team on the municipal league.

It was five years before the 20-second shot clock would start in league games, but the Dukes played like it was already running.

"Basketball then was this slow, deliberate game," Stein said. "We practiced how to get rid of the ball quick. Right from the start we played fast basketball. We didn't dribble around much. The first thing we did when we got the ball was throw it down the court. We played our own system."

Soon the team that no one would back was making headlines with unheard of triple-digit scores.

"In high school, you had to play a certain type of basketball to please the coach," Stein said. "He had a one-handed push shot that you had to do exactly the way he showed you. Our team was shooting above the head, doing hook shots, push shots, jump shots, whatever it took to get it in the basket."

"We didn't try to imitate anybody," recalls Tober. "We just played our own brand of ball."

It was enough. They were called the "Cinderella" team that came from no where to set the league on fire.

There was an occasional sub who played, but for most of the season, the Amboy Dukes had five players, Stein said.

"When that bench emptied, there was nobody left. We couldn't guard as close as we'd wanted to because if one of us fouled out, we'd have to play with four guys…but once we had a big lead, it didn't matter," he said smiling.

The team scored an all-time league record with 122 points in one game. "Back then, if a team went over 40 or 50 points in a game, that was amazing," Deau said. Deau also broke the record for points scored. "It was pretty…nice to score 43 points," he said. "We were playing racehorse-type basketball, running all the time."

They ended the season winning 19 out of 20 games in the league.

"We lost to the Loggers," Stein said. "They were the old guys – you know, 35 years old – they really slowed us down. They had this behind the head shot at half court, we couldn't stop them."

Playing in the league that year led to a scholarship for Ernie Cronk to Yankton College in South Dakota, Deau said. "He lived with his widowed mother. That scholarship gave him his education," Deau said. "He later became a college professor. After Ernie's scholarship, other Rhinelander kids were offered scholarships to Yankton."

The Amboy Dukes went on to play on different teams after 1949, but it wasn't the same.

"That team was like magic," said Stein. "When we were on the basketball court, we were a unit. I've never had any other kind of teamwork like that. I don't remember being mad at anyone. I think that was the secret. To be happy."

The Dukes are now all in their 80s. Tober, Deau and Stein live in Rhinelander. Pavement from the Claridge Motor Inn parking lot covers the spot where the memorial building once stood. But yellow newspaper clippings and sixty-year-old memories still testify to a team that nobody wanted, who followed their own rules and rode the headlines to victory.

http://www.rhinelanderdailynews.com/articles/2010/08/17/news/doc4c6a89d9b0f63239663775.txt