The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall

Last week’s column included reference to a six-on-six basketball game, reminding me of one I’ve been meaning to do about a small-town team that started five sophomores and outperformed all but one of the 700 teams that started the season.

Emerson didn’t have a tall player on the squad. What they had was a 5-6 scoring machine named Vivian Fleming.

Numbers – 1,117 points in 24 games in 1957, 1,521 and a 47.5 average in ‘58, 200 points in four state tournament appearances and 4,168 career points – put her in the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union Hall of Fame. There’s always more to a story than numbers, and newspapers did a good job of telling it.

Emerson, coached by Marlin Mercer, reached the Christmas holiday of 1957 without a loss. On the final Tuesday of the year, his team played Oakland in a game sportswriters rated a toss-up – a showdown between Emerson and a much bigger school that featured the high-scoring Linda Ware. Emerson’s guards throttled Ware, holding her to 19 as Fleming scored 54 in a surprising 80-50 win.

Flu plagued the county tournaments; a number of girls from several schools were unable to play while others, including Fleming, were not well. She was held to 33 in a 66-36 win over Henderson. Pacific Junction was next; Fleming’s 56 were more than enough. Emerson blew through the sectionals and pretty much the whole town packed its bags for Des Moines.

The town’s population was 498. According to The Malvern Leader, nearly 900 fans from the immediate area made the trip.

Wearing short-skirt uniforms that were rapidly going out of style, Francis Darby, Ann Fleming (Vivian’s younger sister), Sally Smith, Gailyn Lunn, Franette Simpson and Vivian were at a disadvantage. Most were young, and they lacked height. Five starters were 5-6. Simpson was 5-2. Maybe. This was Emerson’s first state tournament and, although Vivian was a senior, one of the sophomores was 16, the other four just 15 years old.

In the first round they rolled over 21-2 Ruthven, 81-64. High-scoring Blakesburg, favored to make the finals, was next. Fleming was hounded by an aggressive defense that held her to 34 from the field but fouled too often. She raised her point total by hitting a then-record 20 straight free throws. Emerson won, 98-86, in what was, up until that time, the highest-scoring game in Iowa tournament history.

Emerson, with the Blakesburg victory, became the darling. Several newspapers called them a “Cinderella team.” Reporters found Emerson players to be open, friendly, dedicated, and the only squad in the final four that wore skirts. “Where the heck is Emerson?” was asked, and answered.

March 14 brought the third game in three days and the opponent was State Center, which ended its season as third-best in the state. The lead went back and forth. Ann Fleming, Emerson’s all-conference guard, fouled out midway in the fourth quarter. With two minutes to play, State Center led, 65-64. Vivian then did what she did, scoring seven of her 60 points in the final minute and sending Emerson to the finals, 73-71.

A title wasn’t distributed to 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A or 5A. Only one town could claim the state championship and that town would be either Emerson or heavily-favored West Central of Maynard. Jim Zabel, who called the game, said a better-balanced team had never played in the tourney. Maynard ran the table in 1956. They were undefeated until the title game of ’57 and were on a mission in ’58.

Zabel’s broadcast, which can be heard on-line, calls it northeast Iowa against southwest, a seasoned tournament powerhouse with a height advantage against a scrappy bunch that believed, an unbeaten six with the best shooter in the state facing an unbeaten with the best defense.

Fifteen thousand people packed Veteran’s Auditorium, tens of thousands more had their ear to a radio, most pulling for a Cinderella finish that didn’t happen. West Maynard controlled the tempo, played the low-scoring game they wanted and won, 59-51.

Fleming’s 200 points in four games wasn’t enough, but those girls came home the toast of Southwest Iowa.

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.

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