BELOIT — With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, why can’t you go home again?
For over 20 years of his life, 88-year-old Guy Ritchie called Beloit home and for 16 of those he was a physical education instructor and head boys basketball coach at Beloit Turner.
While he now lives in Henderson, Nevada, on Wednesday afternoon, Ritchie did “go home” and spent several hours at The Rock Bar & Grill reminiscing with a bevy of old friends and former players.
“I was in Beloit from 1960 through 1981 and Turner allowed me to do exactly what I wanted to do,” Ritchie saide. “I have loved sports since I was 10 years old. When I got out of high school, I knew I wanted to be a PE teacher and hopefully a basketball coach.”
Ritchie was 155-148 overall coaching the Trojans and had some memorable squads. His 1968-69 team was only .500, but advanced to the sectional when Wisconsin had no divisions. His 1977-78 team was 9-0 in games decided by four points or less and also reached the sectional before losing to eventual state champion Elkhorn.
It didn’t take long for the conversation Wednesday to focus on his best team, though, a 19-1 squad in 1971-72 whose only loss came in what became known as “The Battle of Beloit.”
That team strung together an impressive list of “firsts” for the school, which had opened its doors in 1963.
They were the first Trojans to win 19 games. They were the first to score 100 points. They were the first to win a conference basketball championship. And they were the first to have their hearts broken by Bernie Barkin’s Beloit Memorial Purple Knights.
Ritchie said he had a “magnificent seven” players: Rob Appleby, Kim Gaffey, Dave Welsh, Dan Davies, Jerry Rickels, Blane Lewis and Tom Brooks. They were all lettermen off a team that finished third in the old Central Suburban Conference the year before.
Ritchie had come on the Turner coaching scene in 1966 with only jayvee coaching behind him. But he learned the ropes from his veteran assistant Dick Davies, who had run his own varsity program for years at Darlington.
“I could not have had a better assistant coach,” Ritchie said. “He had a lot of varsity experience so he was a great mentor for me.”
Turner opened the 1971 season against Milwaukee Rufus King, which had gone 24-2 the previous year, losing to Janesville Parker in the state finals.
Ritchie’s starters for the game included Welsh, who at 6-foot-4 was the tallest Trojan and played forward on offense and guarded the opposing center. Turner’s center was 6-2 Rickels. The other forward was 6-1 Gaffey and the guards were 6-1 Appleby and 5-8 Davies.
The Trojans ambushed King, 75-67, as Gaffey scored 25 points and Appleby added 21. Turner then routed Clinton 99-59 and their regular-season long winning streak would include three more games with 90 or more points and a season high in a 108-73 rout of Parkview.
“We just ran up and down the court,” Appleby said. “There was no three-point shot back then. Kim (Gaffey) was a good pure shooter and he probably would have been good at it, but we just tried to get the ball inside.”
At 18-0, Turner and top-ranked Milwaukee Marquette were the only schools with over 400 enrollment unbeaten throughout the regular season. The AP polls ranked a “Big 10” and a “Little 10” at that time and Turner finished in seventh place in the final Big 10 poll.
Turner opened the postseason against a familiar nemesis in Clinton. The Cougars had handed the Trojans their last defeat, 44-41, in 1971.
Turner demolished Clinton 86-49 in a game featuring a dunk by Welsh that fired up his team but drew a technical foul. Dunks were illegal at that time.
“Coach told us we’d be benched if we did it and he was,” Appleby said with a chuckle.
While the 1971-72 season was the first time the WIAA created two different divisions according to enrollment, Turner was on the low end of the bigger-school division.
“The year before we started out playing teams our own size, but when they went to the two divisions we ended up playing Beloit Memorial right away,” Ritchie said.
The Knights were a modest 9-9 and fourth in the Big Eight that year, but the team was dominated by juniors who would be the backbone of a 1973 state title team, including Gary Hubka, Eddie Smith and Jim Caldwell.
The showdown was held in the old Clinton gym, vastly undersized for this sort of spectacle, so tickets were a prized commodity. Turner fans were thrilled when their Trojans sprinted to a 26-15 lead by the end of the first quarter. The Knights closed within 39-35 by the intermission.
The Knights caught Turner at 41-all and Smith gave Beloit Memorial its first lead, but Appleby helped Turner battle back to a 56-56 tie heading into the fourth quarter.
The Knights’ Troy Cox took advantage of Rickels being on the sidelines in foul trouble and scored his team’s first 10 points of the quarter. Turner still managed to stay within 68-67 with 3:03 left in the game, but eventually ended up on the wrong end of a 77-73 score.
“We played a lot of the same guys from Beloit Memorial in baseball that spring and ended up losing that one, too, by a couple runs,” Appleby said.
As for Ritchie, when he was 45, he decided to follow a different career path as an insurance salesman.
“I was the greatest failure ever at it,” he says with a laugh. “Fortunately, my wife picked up a USA Today on day and said, ‘Guy, the Army is hiring sports directors.’ So we went to Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty), North Carolina, for a couple years and I ran sports programs for soldiers. Then I went to Kentucky and did the same thing there. It was just a great experience. Life has really been good to me.”
“That’s obviouis,” Appleby said. “All I know is that we all loved playing for him.”
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