CONVAL HOOP HERITAGE

  In the late 1960s, the Peterborough Recreation Dept. sponsored summer league basketball featuring high school squads representing Peterborough, Antrim, Conant and Hillsborough. A mid-July 1968 contest at the Adams Playground tennis courts (before there was a separate basketball court) featured an intense battle between arch rivals Peterborough and Conant, with the home team prevailing in a physical contest, 35-29. Sophomore Dick Blood (pictured vying for a rebound with a Conant player) led Peterborough to victory with nine points. Fifty-six Julys later, Conval High is one of two D2 teams represented in the D1 Manchester Memorial High summer league, but the Cougs are holding their own against the largest division in the state. They opened with a tight 50-44 loss to Manchester Central and followed it up with a decisive 76-50 win over Merrimack. Concord, Milford, and Memorial are the other participating teams. The league runs through August 8, with games every Monday and Wednesday ...

L ike 2024, as the season wound down in 1951’-52, hopes for the following year were high in Conval Nation... The Peterborough Hilanders (pictured)—with players who would be elderly grandfathers today— had a rough go of it, finishing the regular season at 4-13. But these young guys would improve the following year and be among the elite in Class B in 1954 and 1955. Teaming with a one-loss JV team from 1951-’52, Peterborough High would be sparked by freshman sensation Dave Gavitt —a player remembered for giving his all and his leadership. including rallying his teammates for a shoot-around after losing the 1955 tournament game. Shown in the photo are (front, from left): Phil Bailey, John Twomey, co-captains Jack Harris and Jimmy Yakovakis, Eddie Wheeler and Dave Gavitt. Second row: Coach Dick Snow, Harry Clough, Tom Lawrence, Buddy Charest and assistant manager Tod Hofer. Back row: Bob Durkee, Don LaFontaine, Bill Taylor and manager Phil Petts . Yakovakis, Clough and Taylor were all f...

T his pic of the 1911 Peterborough High basketball team is believed to be one of the earliest basketball team photos ever published in Conval Nation. Although area high schools had been playing for at least seven years, this week in 1913 saw one of the first reports of games in the local newspaper. Photos in early newspapers were rare, and text dominated the four-page Peterborough Transcript on February 13, 1913. The paper, however, did document the weather that week: “Ten below zero Monday morning, and winter ever since. The slight, soft snow of Tuesday helped out the sleighing some, although it is thin over the hills. Ice has formed rapidly during the past few days, and it is being harvested in all directions at present, and is being hauled on sleds.” Wow!   As for one of the first-ever local “basket ball” news items, the Transcript reported: “There will be two games at the town hall, Friday evening, Feb. 17, when the Wilton High and the Peterborough High will meet for the first ...

I n the winter of 1954, “Attn. Coach Snow” was the local newspaper’s prompting of Peterborough High coach Dick Snow to pay attention to this hot-shot junior from Hancock High, Bud Adams. It marked the last year that Hancock High would field a team as the town opted to join Peterborough in the fall of 1954. “The Friday triumph scored at the expense of arch-rival Antrim stands a chance of becoming one of the most glorious in the school’s history,” wrote the Peterborough Transcript. “Bud Adams, clever HHS guard and a good hoop prospect for any schoolboy squad (he’s only a junior) scored no less than 31 points as his team set back Antrim on the latter’s court, 59-41. This was Hancock’s tenth game of the season, and their lone victory.” The last Hancock High squad was a young one, with only one senior, guard Forrest Weston . The others were sophomore forward Gale Hennessey and seventh grader (!) Butch Kimball , and center sophomore Bob Kierstead (who scored 18 points against Antrim). Co...

Antrim High's Ed Coughlan, December 1965...more than a force on the court. P erhaps it’s a rural New Hampshire thing, but the nine towns that send students to Conval High—the Contoocook River bending its way around several of them—have long been interconnected. Each town is unique in its own way, and yet there is this sense that when you cross the town line from, say, New Boston to Francestown, you have entered Cougar Country as much as you’ve entered one of its nine towns. Last year’s boys’ basketball starting five, for example, represented five different towns. And when you explore our region’s hoop history, those interconnections keep popping up. In 1964, for example, when Antrim High was alive and well, little would Conval fans realize that Antrim’s long-time basketball coach, Chick Hamel, would one day become CV’s first assistant principal. (See “Paving the Way” ). And one of Chick’s star players in 1964 would one day become a legend in Hancock for many years. “You don’t have...

T he Conval Hoop Heritage project has been an absolute blast, and we (coach and historian Dick Ellingwood ’75 at left and bball stats guy and writer Steve Smith ’72 at right) want to give a huge shoutout to the Monadnock Center for History and Culture — and especially Executive Director Michelle Stahl ’85. Michelle and the Center staff have given us great access to a treasure trove of historic photos, documents and old newspapers that have been instrumental in telling CV’s 100-year hoop heritage story. We couldn’t have done any of it without them. And the thing is, there’s so much more to explore and many more stories to tell!…

T he 1968-’69 Antrim High Warriors were one of a string of AHS teams to post highly successful seasons in the decade of the ‘60s, finishing 13-4 and earning a first round bye in the Class S tournament. Old nemesis Henniker (now John Stark), which nipped Antrim twice during the regular season, ended the run in the quarter-finals with a tight 57-54 victory. But not before Antrim made a heroic comeback! Down 20-9, the Warriors rallied late to tie the game at 38-all before the taller Henniker team nudged back in front until the final buzzer. Senior Fred Doleac was a scoring machine for Antrim that season, finishing his senior year with 349 points. Pictured (front, from left): Kurt Schacht, Richard Brzozowski, Gary Cole, Paul Boule and Bruce Chesson . Back row: Bruce Davies, Dennis Huntington, John Phillips, Fred Doleac, Jack LaMonda, Ken Wood and Coach Chick Hamel . Missing from photo: Jeff Barsanti.

F rom the old gyms of Peterborough and Antrim High to The Cave at CV , some of the most valuable members of every successful team in our hoop heritage have been the athletes on the bench encouraging and cheering on one another. From leading the chants of “de-fense!”to deep shouts of “yeahhhhhhh” saluting a great play, to scouting out the other team’s trends for coaches and teammates, and then being ready to contribute when called upon, our engaged benches keep coming up huge! They’re the stuff winning traditions are built upon. 👊 #highschoolbasketball #everyplayermatters #winningtradition #team #family #mikemunhallphotos #gocougs

Coach Chick Hamel maps out the strategy in a 1969 game against unbeaten Hollis that helped lead to an ending few in Antrim would ever forget. I n the 1960s, Antrim High was a perennial force to be reckoned with in Class S. The Warriors were regular participants in the state tournament   from 1962 to 1970, missing out on only the ’64 and ’65 event. Many memorable games were played in the old town gym over those years, and one of the biggest and most exciting of them all took place in late January 1969. Powerful Hollis High (long before the days of becoming Hollis-Brookline) rode into town with a 33-game winning streak. Earlier in the season, the Cavaliers had eked out a slim victory over Antrim on their home court, and many expected another down-to-the-wire finish.   They were not disappointed. After delighting the home crowd with a surprising 11-point halftime lead, Antrim suddenly went cold in the third period. Hollis reeled off the first eight points of the second half, and...

Butch Walker and the Hilanders, making hoop history in 1961-'62. A lthough Peterborough High School had many winning seasons in its storied history, the 1961-’62 Hilanders were big news that winter, posting the best regular season record (16-3) of any PHS team from 1955 to the final year of 1969-’70 before becoming part of Conval Regional. (Notice that Antrim High was having a pretty good year, too!) Led by forward Butch Walker (pictured), who tallied 341 points in 17 regular season games, Coach Ed Lithgow 's Hilanders mowed over all opponents with the exception of losses at Wilton and Milford. Although Walker was leading scorer, throughout the season, the team featured balanced scoring from the likes of Dave Kendall, Bill Kuendig, Dennis Shea, and Mike Gavitt (former star Dave Gavitt ’s brother). Other contributors were Al Reynolds, Neil Springfield, Doug Little, Pete Smith and Dick Mackey . In the 1962 Class M (D3) tournament against Gotham, while Walker led the way with...

Members of the historic 1969-'70 Antrim High girls' team (front, from left): Judy Cole, Susan Beauchamp, co-captains Beth Jones and Bonnie Rockwell, Shelley Barsanti and Marcia LaMonda. Back row: Coach Alan Page, Ruth Brzozowski, Nancy Jones, Laurie Barsanti, Patricia Desaulniers, Wanda Martel, Terry Patterson, Amy Webber, Heidi Pettengill, Tammy Durgin and manager Lorraine Elliott. A lthough sports historians have documented that girls in New Hampshire played basketball interscholastically before the boys, and communities like Peterborough played host to invitational state tournaments in the 1930s, there was no official girls' state championship or tournament until the NHIAA’s large school (Class AA) event in 1970. Smaller schools (Class A) didn’t have their first official champion until the 1971-'72 season. But if those tournaments had begun a few years earlier, the Antrim High Warriors would surely have been one of the favorites to win it all. 1969-'70 champions ...

Members of this historic Peterborough High team  of 1967-78 were (back row, from left): Coach Sharon Derby, Sherry Carbee, Becky Morgan, Mary Ann Cuddihee, Joyce Tilton and Joyce Jarest. Front row (counterclockwise from left): Jane Stevens, Janie Hayes, Kathy Doscher, Wendy Carney, Wendy Peters and Janet Newton. M ore strong hoop roots of Conval Nation… Years before the NHIAA began a state tournament for girls basketball, the Peterborough High Hilanders were one of the best teams in New Hampshire in the 1967-68 season, especially among smaller schools. Under the leadership of Coach Sharon Derby , the Hilanders posted a 13-1 regular season record, including a 35-26 victory over Nashua High who hadn’t lost in five years! At a year-end invitational tournament at Fall Mountain, the girls rallied from a 12-point halftime deficit to upend Lebanon, 42-37, in the first round. However, the host school had the upper hand in the championship where despite Janet Newton ’s 17 points, the Wildca...

Mighty Warriors from Antrim, 1967-68 (front, from left): Dennis Huntington, Richard Brzozowski, Gary Cole and Bruce Davies. Standing (from left): Coach Chick Hamel, Fred Doleac, Jeff Barsanti, John Doleac, Robin Rockwell, Dave Jones and Bill Davies. Missing from photo: Steve Brzozowski and Bruce Chesson. W hen Antrim High School joined Peterborough High School to form Conval Regional High School in 1970, it’s not surprising that two winning basketball traditions helped to immediately put the Cougars on the map. While Peterborough was the team of the decade in the 1930s and produced champions in the late 1920s and early 1940s, Antrim High was among the cream of the crop throughout the 1960s. From 1962 to its final season of 1970, Antrim was a perennial participant in the Class S (D4) state tournament and among the best in the state near the end of the decade. But the season everyone in Antrim will long remember is 1967-68 when the Warriors were on the edge of reaching the pinnacle of hi...

S ince the earliest days of high school basketball in our towns, when hundreds of fans thought nothing of traveling great distances over not very good roads to watch their teams play, Conval Nation has had a history of “traveling well” to away games. In one late 1920s season, Peterborough High fans reportedly outnumbered Keene High fans in their own gym! The same thing happened during a pivotal game at Goffstown in 1971. Pictured are enthusiastic fans who made the trek to the Class I (D2) state tournament in Durham in 1993. That heritage will be greatly needed in January with a revised boys’ schedule that has the Cougars on the road for five straight games: Tuesday, Jan. 3 at Hollis-Brookline Friday, Jan. 6 at Plymouth Tuesday, Jan. 10 at Souhegan (the Sabers will be here on Wednesday, Feb. 15) Friday, Jan. 13 at Merrimack Valley Saturday, Jan. 14 at Manchester West All varsity games at 6:30, except for Hollis-Brookline at 6 p.m. #makeanoteofit #roadwarriors #historyreallymatters #roll...

Class S cheerleading state champs in 1968, Antrim High Schoo l F rom the very beginning, Conval High was known around New Hampshire for cheerleading excellence.  The first year (1970-71), the squad was so popular, two spectator buses that included the boys’ varsity basketball team went to Inter-Lakes High School in Meredith to root them on to the de-facto state championship. A big reason for the early success was the excellence in tradition that came from both Antrim and Peterborough high schools. The photo about shows the 1967 Class S cheerleading champs from Antrim High (from left): Cheryl Lamonda, Linda Ashford, Pat Hammond, Janet Patterson, Joy Craig, manager Linda Stacey, Betty Hammond, Sandy Putnam, Suzie Keating, Eileen Magoon and Regina Lemire. In the photo above are members of the ’67 cheering squad from PHS, known for their athleticism and deep voices (from left): Sue Koehler, Marsha Harris, Nancy Fetzer, Sandy Trufant, Debbie Ames, Debby Bowen and Nancy Wheeler; missing ...

The very first, and arguably the greatest, Cougars back in 1970-71. Front from left: Steve Hartwell, Gary Cabana, Coach Ray Richard, Paul Boule, Tod Silegy. Back from left: Tom Lithgow, Dan Pratt, Jeff Wheeler, Dick Blood, Bill Bishop McRae, Pete Fontaine, John Banks. Missing from photo: Kevin Chapman. D uring the 1969 school year, students at Peterborough and Antrim high schools completed a survey to determine a mascot and school colors for the new Conval High School that would open in the fall of 1970. In the end, the majority chose blue and gold, and Golden Cougars. Yes, Golden Cougars. No one seems to know how it got whittled down to simply Cougars, but not to be forgotten is that one of the contenders for school mascot was Warlanders—a combination of Antrim High’s Warriors and Peterborough High’s Hilanders, symbolic of two storied high schools coming together to form something new. After all, history was about to be made. Some teachers were so excited about the new educational opp...