What goes up must come down they say, and down we came! This year was a down year for East but one in which we played some good basketball and coached some fine boys. Rod Scheyer was the main gun here and he was a fine ball player. Rod set a rebounding record which still stands here at East. He was tough to handle in the high post and certainly afraid of no one when the going got rough. Pat Halstead, perhaps the biggest and no doubt the smartest ball player in the state of Washington for 1958-59, was the center. He stood 6′ 10″ tall and had his problems getting it all coordinated. Mike Edwards moved in as a sophomore and has been the only sophomore ever to letter in basketball at East.
Alex Bennett, a true competitor, who did not have a great deal of natural ability, but he certainly made up for it with desire and brains. Farrell Forbes was a guard with lots of natural ability. His first love was baseball and he played this game well also. These boys were backed by Anderson, Mackey, Beard, Busse, Eno, Lee, Liesmann, and Dolmseth. This team was not a winner but they were no quitters. They always seemed to be on the verge of breaking loose and hitting their stride. Not one of them will forget the heart stopping loss to West on our floor in over-time when they had it won with ten seconds to go and saw it slip from their grasp.
This team rose to many occasions magnificently. The South Kitsap team was a good one but our kids didn’t like them too much and they rose up and popped them twice. Lincoln had a fine team but we battled them twice in tremendous fashion and although we came out on the short end, they were fine games with great effort on our kids’ part. Olympia was a great team and the Knights dropped them at home without too much trouble. It was an interesting year. It was a losing season but rather painless because they worked at it and did they have fun? You bet they did, maybe too much!
