LOOKING BACK is a Leader online feature that highlights historic photos. Readers are invited to submit their historic Jefferson County photos for online publication.
With the high school basketball season well under way, now seems a good time to try to shed some light on a mystery that needs to be solved. It’s a team picture of the 1946-1947 De Soto boys basketball team.
What’s known is the last names of the boys who played for the Dragons that year, and that’s because they’ve been written on the photo. From left, the team included Eichelberger, Fincher, McKay, Johnson, Spiedel, Deprom, Pool, Loomis, Viehman and Maness.
What’s also known that this is the first boys basketball squad to be led by Ovid N. Hunter, but he stepped down as coach for the next four years before returning to the bench to coach from 1952-1956. During that tenure, he compiled a 76-17 record, taking the Jefferson County Conference championship all four years and the regional title the last three of those years.
But what became of the 1946-1947 team? Who are these boys and how did they do over that winter?
According to “The History of De Soto, Mo., High School Interscholastic Athletics, 1929-1959,” written by Roger S. Eberhardt in 1997, a season record could not be found for that team. Apparently no other details could be found, either, as that’s all Eberhardt has to say about the matter.
Much more is known about Ovid Hunter.
He had quite a bit of success guiding the fortunes of sports teams at De Soto High.
As the football coach from 1946-1955, he won 60 games against 24 losses and two ties, winning five league championships. According to Eberhardt’s research, Hunter was famed as a great strategist.
He had an even longer tenure as boys track coach. From 1946-1956, his teams won the state indoor championship in 1954 and outdoor titles in 1954 and 1956.
With his 1953 conference track crown, Hunter became the first coach in the county to win conference titles in the same year in three sports (football, basketball and track).
Apparently a man of many talents, Hunter also led the baseball team from 1951 until it was dropped in 1953 and then again when it was revived in 1956.
If you have any information on Hunter’s 1946-1947 basketball team, let us know.
Send submissions (or if you have any information on this photo) to LOOKING BACK to nvrweakly@aol.com or bring or mail them to the Leader office, 503 N. Second St., Festus (P.O. Box 159, 63028). Please include your name, phone number, a brief description of what’s in the photo and tell us how you came by it. Please also include when it was taken, where and by whom (if known). A new LOOKING BACK photo will be posted each week.
-- Steve Taylor
