On a cattle ranch in western Iowa, in a rural patch of land where cows probably outnumber kids, Hebron High School athletic director John Lalor recently introduced himself to a man with whom he was doing business. A farmer himself who tends 400 acres in this nook of northern McHenry County, Lalor mentioned during the conversation where he lived.
“The guy stopped me right away and said, `You mean Hebron, the small school that won the state basketball title in Illinois a long time ago?”‘ Lalor recalled Wednesday. “I said, `Yep.’ Here I was, in the middle of nowhere, nearly in Nebraska, and someone had heard of Hebron because of what happened.”
What happened 53 years ago forever forged an identity for a community and the five teenagers who led Hebron High School, enrollment 98 at the time, to the 1952 IHSA boys basketball title at Huff Gym in Champaign.
If the Illinois men’s basketball team wins the school’s first NCAA championship Monday night in St. Louis, many in the Midwest will hail it, along with Loyola’s 1963 NCAA championship, as the biggest basketball moments ever in the Land of Lincoln.
They might disagree in Hebron, a place still so awash with pride that the town’s water supply is in a tower painted like a basketball with the inscription, “Home of 1952 State Champions.”
Hebron’s 64-59 victory over Quincy, which had 300 more students (1,035) than the town of Hebron had people, so captivated the public that the headline on the front page of the Champaign News-Gazette the next morning screamed in capital letters above a smiling team photo, “HEBRON GIANTS REIGN SUPREME.”
Illinois’ men’s basketball team had clinched a spot in the NCAA Final Four by beating Duquesne in Chicago Stadium the same night, but that news was announced in the same Sunday paper with a smaller headline just above the fold that said, “Illini Win! (Details in Sports Section).”
“We didn’t know what we had done,” said Phil Judson, a member of the Hebron team who later played basketball for the Illini with his twin brother, Paul.
Judson and his teammates got an inkling when the caravan home grew to 700 cars and 5,000 fans lined Main Street for their arrival. Even 53 years later, Hebron’s feat remains the standard by which all other basketball team achievements in the state are measured.
“Certainly, as far as high school sports are concerned, the Hebron championship stands above the rest as far as how it captures the imagination of fans around the state,” said IHSA assistant executive director Scott Johnson, author of a book about Hebron, “Once They Were Giants.”
“How would it compare to Illinois winning the NCAA tournament?” Johnson asked. “Certainly an Illinois victory would be popular with people in the state, but I think there was an innocence of the times when Hebron won that you just can’t recapture today.”
A simpler era
Hebron team rules in ’52, for example, included eating no ice cream or candy, getting nine hours of sleep per night and not dating during the season except on Saturday nights.
It was a different era, devoid of the trash-talking and disrespect of opponents often seen today. As evidence, the Judson twins spent three years at Illinois as teammates of Bruce Brothers, the star player of the Quincy team who fouled out against Hebron in the historic state final. They never discussed the game.
“The closest we came was when [a reporter] said to Bruce in the training room, `If you wouldn’t have fouled out, think you could have beaten Hebron?”‘ Phil Judson said. “Nobody said a word, out of respect, I think.”
It probably takes as long to drive through downtown Hebron as it does for Dee Brown to break a full-court press. The barber shop sits in the same location as it did 53 years ago when Joe Fabri gave the boys “victory haircuts,” after the state title. The only thing that really has changed in 53 years is the sign welcoming visitors. It says the population has grown to 1,100–up 400 from the days of basketball glory.
Back then, so much farmland surrounded the town limits that Bill Schulz, the team’s 6-foot-10-inch center who later played at Northwestern, spent 1st through 8th grades in a one-room farmhouse that served as a school. As the story goes, Schulz never had witnessed or played basketball when coach Russ Ahearn approached him about trying out as a freshman. Schulz learned the game from Howie Judson, the twins’ older brother and former White Sox pitcher who was an all-state basketball player at Hebron, and hung on Ahearn’s every word.
So obedient was Schulz that he still carries in his wallet hand-written instructions Ahearn issued him before his junior year. The note reminds Schulz, who had planned to quit school before discovering basketball but became a successful businessman, to “do 50 push-ups each day,” “jump rope” and “continue to be a splendid gentleman.”
“It’s a little worn but it’s still in my wallet,” Schulz said Wednesday. “I guess you could say I always wanted to carry around with me a little piece of Hebron.”
He is not the only one.
Judson regularly wears the shiny ring the team had made last summer and his wife, Lesley, proudly sports a 10-karat gold miniature basketball pendant engraved with the words “1952 Champions,” that was awarded every Hebron player.
The former Illinois Sixth Man, whose brother Paul was team captain their senior year in 1956, enjoys reminiscing about Hebron as much as he enjoys his alma mater’s first Final Four appearance in 16 years.
“If they win it all, that’s best in the nation and ours was only a state title,” said Judson, father of former Illini assistant and Northern Illinois head coach Rob Judson. “But as far as the impact each title would have on basketball in Illinois, we did something that has not been done since.”
Still remembered
Judson pulled up in front of his old school on Wednesday morning in a car bearing a license plate that read, “HEBRON 9.” That was Judson’s number in high school, and he is wearing it in the montage of photos lining the walls in one of the hallways that serves as a mini-museum.
The school is closed for spring break this week, but the athletic director opened the gym for Judson. It reminded him of the days when the custodian used to leave the door to the gym unlocked for the Judson twins, and they would turn up at night with their buddies and shoot baskets past their bedtimes.
Nowadays, the 81-year-old gym has been turned into a stage for school plays, but it never will produce the type of drama that Judson recalls every time he steps foot inside those four walls.
Memories flood back: The image of fans who could not get one of the 500 tickets climbing on ladders outside the gym’s windows for a peek inside. The way the Giants mastered the intricacies of using the smaller 74-foot-by-40-foot dimensions of the court that required having two 10-second lines, a different one for each end. The 7-0 home record Hebron posted his senior year and the nine weeks they spent atop the state polls.
“A lot of people say the movie `Hoosiers’ was really about us,” Judson said.
Mere mention of the film, based on the 1954 Milan team from Indiana, still can make the blood pressure of folks in Hebron rise a few points. Johnson’s book points out that Hebron’s enrollment was smaller than Milan by 64 students, that Hebron was ranked No. 1 most of the season while Milan was an underdog and that Hebron thrived in a transition game unlike Milan, which stalled.
According to Judson, a group led by Chicago film executive Jim Sikora continues efforts to bring the story to the big screen.
“Somebody said it might be too squeaky-clean to make into a movie,” Judson said. “But that’s what we were–good, old-fashioned winners.”
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dhaugh@tribune.com
