{"id":8809,"date":"2019-06-21T08:31:06","date_gmt":"2019-06-21T13:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/from-trailer-court-to-basketball-court\/"},"modified":"2019-06-21T08:31:08","modified_gmt":"2019-06-21T13:31:08","slug":"from-trailer-court-to-basketball-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/from-trailer-court-to-basketball-court\/","title":{"rendered":"From trailer court to basketball court"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dave Strain with Marty Waukazoo, Strain, legendary former coach of the Cobblers, described Marty as his greatest player in 28 years of coaching.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

KYLE\u2014 A hundred and fifty-one students received their degrees at Oglala Lakota College Sunday morning, and before the packed house, OLC President Tom Shortbull proudly congratulated them on their accomplishment. He then introduced the keynote speaker, Marty Waukazoo, by first comparing himself to Waukazoo as a basketball player\u2014 \u201cI was good, but he was great,\u201d and although many in attendance did not know it, the tall, angular, 70-year-old Waukazoo is arguably the greatest basketball player the Lakota nation has ever produced.<\/p>\n

That alone should not be enough to qualify Waukazoo to speak before a class of graduating college seniors, but after basketball, he was graduated from Black Hills State in 1973, and after a transformative period of soul searching turmoil, Waukazoo also went on to become CEO of the Native American Health Center in Oakland, California, and over the next 37 years he would direct the expansion of that agency from 17 to 350 employees, and oversee a budget increase from $88 thousand to $35 million, and health clinic expansions into Sacramento and Fresno.<\/p>\n

By all measures, Waukazoo has led a successful life, but like most Lakota lives, there is a deep story the surface details do not touch, a story that began back in North Rapid in the early 1950\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were living in a trailer behind the Mother Butler Center when I was 3-4-5 years old,\u201d Waukazoo said. \u201cFifteen feet from the gymnasium. Every morning I would go in, and I was an alter boy for Father Collins. I would go serve Mass from 6:00 to 6:30. At 6:30 he\u2019d give me a glass of milk and a day-old donut. I\u2019d eat that and drink the milk and then he\u2019d take me out to the court and had me try to make baskets and one day I did make a basket. I must have been four years old, and he called the Rapid City Journal, they came over and took a picture of me and all that, and that\u2019s where I really developed. Years later I asked my parents, why did we live in a trailer house behind the Mother Butler Center, and my parents told me because they wouldn\u2019t allow Indians to park their trailers in the White trailer court. From that adversity I became a basketball player. It\u2019s kind of how adversities give you a gift, and that gift is basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waukazoo started playing for Mother Butler when St John\u2019s Catholic School wouldn\u2019t let him play with boys in the Seventh and Eighth Grade, because he was too young, \u201cbut I was better than those guys.\u201d He said Mother Butler didn\u2019t have a very good team, but they did play St John\u2019s, and \u201cwe beat \u2018em.\u201d<\/p>\n

At North Junior High, Waukazoo found himself the only Lakota player on the team, but something happened about that time, that would dramatically alter the course of Waukazoo\u2019s basketball career: Dave Strain was hired as Rapid City High School\u2019s basketball coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been very special in my life all these years,\u201d Waukazoo said. \u201cHe\u2019s really had an influence in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waukazoo was a perfect fit for Strain\u2019s system: fast break transition, tough man-to-man defense, and selfless, hustling play. Strain had built a pipeline from South and North Junior Highs to the High School, and the Lakota boys at North figured prominently in his system. Strain had a lifelong familiarity with Lakota basketball, particularly the brand played on Waukazoo\u2019s home reservation, Rosebud.<\/p>\n

At this time the Cobblers were a truly dominant basketball powerhouse, always at the state tournament, often in the championship game. But Waukazoo made the varsity as a sophomore, even though he was rail thin and would grow about three inches before he was a senior. As talent laden as the 1965 and 1966 teams were, they failed at the ultimate prize, upset in the early rounds, and with Jim Linz, another Cobbler great, injured in 1967, Waukazoo was now the sole blue chipper when the Cobblers went to the 1967 state tourney in Sioux Falls, a tournament that would again have a lifelong impact on Waukazoo\u2019s internal circuitry.<\/p>\n

Sportswriter\u2019s dubbed 1967, the Year of the Indian, because Waukazoo, Pierre\u2019s Bruce Bad Moccasin, and Pine Ridge\u2019s Will Garnier all made first team, the only time three of the top five have been Indian. Miller was the opening round opponent, sold by the media as a sentimental, small school \u201cCinderella,\u201d destined to upset the big school powerhouses from Rapid City and Sioux Falls. They were no match for Strain\u2019s Cobblers, and especially no match for Waukazoo, who lit them up.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrain was never one to run up a score,\u201d Waukazoo said, explaining why Strain pulled him from the floor. What neither Strain, the team, or Waukazoo expected was for the crowd to boo Waukazoo. Strain wrote a detailed article some years later, explaining that dark moment in Sioux Falls, and making no bones it was racially motivated. Waukazoo hung his head on the bench, perplexed, unable to really process what was happening, \u201cI don\u2019t know how to describe it. I didn\u2019t understand (the booing), I didn\u2019t know what was going on. It didn\u2019t make sense to me. But it did hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the next game, Rapid City defeated Pierre and Bruce Bad Moccasin, and that set up the championship game with Milbank, which Rapid City lost.<\/p>\n

It was only after the final game that Waukazoo began to process the first game where he was booed: \u201cThat also could explain my only vivid memory of that (first) game, the vivid memory of that game is after the final game. I got the MVP, got the medal, and what I remember about that tournament is walking into that locker room and throwing that medal against a brick wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

The medal was fetched back to Waukazoo, but he said, \u201cI don\u2019t want this, you can have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe that explains that anger that I had,\u201d Waukazoo said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t because we had lost, I was just angry at the whole thing. What did I do? What did I do to these people? I could never figure out. How come I just didn\u2019t grab that medal and hang onto it and show everybody my medal? I didn\u2019t want it. That whole experience had an impact on me. At that point, I lost my passion for basketball. It just killed it. Seventeen-years-old, people calling you goddamn names, I could hear it. I played basketball in college but I wasn\u2019t the kind of ballplayer that I was in high school. I was a selfish gunner, and I just didn\u2019t want to get better, and that was my college career, two years.\u201d<\/p>\n

A knee injury ended Waukazoo\u2019s basketball career. He never played again. But he sees that injury as a blessing because he had only a 1.6 GPA, \u201cjust enough to stay eligible to play basketball,\u201d but now he had no choice but to focus on his studies. Despite being graduated in 1973, Waukazoo had a dark decade of alcoholism ahead of him. He moved out to California, worked spot jobs here and there, and he drank, and his first marriage ended, and then in 1982, he had had enough and we went into a 90-day rehab and came out a changed person. We know this because he never touched another drop of alcohol again.<\/p>\n

He rebuilt his personal life, embarked on a professional life, and to whatever extent a person can heal from the wounds of a childhood marred by racism, he healed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI dreamed about coaching basketball,\u201d Waukazoo said. \u201cI never got that chance but at work, I was like a coach,\u201d and he laughs, thinking that in the end, he became Dave Strain to 350 employees, and despite the lasting plain of those emotional scars from over a half century back, in the end people will only remember Marty Waukazoo for what he gave back to others, not the broken spirit who lost a decade fighting addiction, struggling to rediscover himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of how adversities give you a gift,\u201d Waukazoo had said about basketball, and just as the knee injury was a gift that created Waukazoo, the college graduate, maybe a lost decade is what created Waukazoo, the dedicated care giver.<\/p>\n

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Visit Original Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/div>

Dave Strain with Marty Waukazoo, Strain, legendary former coach of the Cobblers, described Marty as his greatest player in 28 years of coaching. KYLE\u2014 A hundred and fifty-one students received their degrees at Oglala Lakota College Sunday morning, and before the packed house, OLC President Tom Shortbull proudly congratulated them <\/p>\n

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Shared by Native Sun News Today<\/a> June 21, 2019<\/p>\n

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