Ed Bunce was simultaneously exhilarated and numb the instant the desperation three-point shot by Westinghouse guard Tavaris Wiggins’ sailed wide right, securing West Aurora’s 60-57 Class AA state basketball championship.
Standing with a group of friends who had traveled to the state finals at Carver Arena in Peoria, Bunce likened the experience to being caught in a dream, crazed with excitement though feeling frozen and mute.
“Everybody just stood there,” he said. “We couldn’t say anything. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You dream about it, but when it happens, it is something else.”
The next day, the celebration parade originated in parking lot at West Plaza in Aurora, a collection of storefront businesses where Bunce has operated his own barbershop for nearly 40 years.
The euphoria, community pride and intense emotional satisfaction of the school’s state basketball championship has not faded.
The players and students are not necessarily informed by the same sense of history, though for a great many of Bunce’s customers, recalling those charged experiences is an essential part of his shop’s social texture.
“It was the highlight of a lot of people’s lives,” he said. “I’ve been following them for 40 years. Everybody was brought together by the experience. We’ve been so close so many times with [former coach John] McDougal [in 1973 and ’76], [All-State player] Bill Small in 1958 and 1959. The moment the [championship] game was over, I suddenly began to think of all the players who have played here.”
This rabid basketball hotbed 40 miles west of Chicago is defined by the intense partisan followings of its varied schools. The rivalry between West Aurora and East Aurora is possibly the most passionate, distinguished and emotionally draining throughout the state. Saturday night at East’s gym, the two rivals meet for the 200th time since their first encounter on Feb. 7, 1913, when West beat East 36-7.
In 1976, Mary Bryant was at the Assembly Hall in Champaign with her late husband Fred when West Aurora lost the title game to Morgan Park on a shot at the buzzer. She watched helplessly as her son Jay–one of five of her sons to play at West Aurora–fell to his knees after Morgan Park’s Laird Smith drained a 17-footer to beat the Blackhawks 45-44.
Ten months ago, Mary Bryant was surrounded by many of her sons at an impromptu party at a Peoria hotel the night of the championship. “We’ve been waiting a long time for No. 1,” she said. “I don’t know how to express it. It was so gratifying to have a state championship. That night in the hotel, I’ve never had so much fun in all of my life.”
West Aurora did more than defeat a Westinghouse team many thought unbeatable. Its victory obliterated a historical burden Aurora schools had operated under to reach the top. It reversed a palpable sense of frustration in a town blessed with a remarkable basketball tradition invariably undone in the quest for the highest prize.
West Aurora had lost three previous state-title games. East Aurora qualified for the quarterfinals six times after the flamboyant Ernie Kivisto arrived at the school in 1967, though it never advanced to the championship game. Marmion Academy fielded high-caliber teams in the 1960s and mid-’70s.
Aurora Central Catholic was defeated in the 1978 Class A final. Aurora Christian lost the 1995 Class A state-title game on a last-second shot.
“There’s no doubt about it,” said Naperville North coach Mark Lindo, who graduated from East Aurora and coached basketball and baseball at Aurora Central Catholic. “Aurora is a basketball town. Aurora athletes live on the playground. They don’t live on the football fields, baseball diamonds or soccer fields. Aurora’s athletes live on the basketball courts. Kids in Aurora play hoops; there’s a passion for hoops.
“You see packed houses, you see painted faces, you see something that you don’t normally see on a Friday night. The ability is normally special. Even when it’s not, teams go out and fight the heck out of each other.”
There remains a collective sense that if the trophy belongs to West Aurora, the accomplishment extends throughout the city. Standing near the loud, ecstatic section of West Aurora followers at the state final last March, Richard Perkins, a three-sport East Aurora star in the 1980s and now an assistant basketball coach at East, screamed out: “We finally got one.”
With the East-West showdown Saturday night, the specter of the state championship only intensifies the intrigue and backdrop of a great and historic rivalry. Former Illinois great Kenny Battle led West to three wins over East in the 1983-84 season, including a 75-51 rout in the regional final. Battle played amid a streak of 10 wins in 11 games for West; East then countered by winning 13 of the next 15.
West leads the overall series 115-84, and the two have met 36 times in the state playoffs (West leads 19-17). Last year West Aurora beat East Aurora in a sectional final, but the team unity, chemistry and innate mental toughness that was essential to the Blackhawks’ title run was to a great degree borne out of the desire to prove they are best in the city.
“That’s the way I look at it,” said East Aurora basketball coach Bob Kivisto, who arrived at East Aurora in 1967 when his father took over the Tomcats’ program. Bob and younger brother Tom were stars in the late ’60s and remain prominent figures of the rivalry.
“There are some people on the East Side who don’t feel the same way, but my feeling was, it’s about time,” Bob Kivisto said. “Now it’s time we work on getting a second [state] title.”
West Aurora coach Gordie Kerkman said the first congratulatory phone call at his Peoria hotel room was from an East assistant coach who once was a student-teacher under him.
“I had a number of people from the East Side who seemed genuinely happy that we won,” Kerkman said. “I’m sure they wish East had won–in fact some of them actually told me they wish East had won instead of West–but they were happy that Aurora finally won a state championship.
“I take pride that East has been [in the quarterfinals] a number of times. Aurora Christian was right there a few years ago. Aurora Central played in a state-title game. When people think about basketball in the state of Illinois, they obviously think about Chicago.
“But Aurora is very similar to a lot of the old schools like Quincy, Rock Island, Peoria, Springfield, Rockford and Galesburg, cities with great traditions that almost all have won a state championship.”
The dividends of the championship are felt in other significant ways. The team plays to packed houses at home. The intense, loyal backers follow the team on the road to Galesburg and Pontiac. The school’s lower levels are packed with talent, and this year’s third-ranked team–starting a freshman, a sophomore and a junior–is playing its most impressive ball of the season.
Mary Bryant continues to attend every game.
“I was very proud of all of them, not just my own kids,” she said. “I’ve watched so many teams and kids. I’m still going, and I’m still loving it.”
