NH Hoop Nostalgia - early 1970's

“My favorite era was the early seventies. There was some great hoop being played in the Granite state.” – GNG

I figure that GNG is only slightly older than me. My father coached JV basketball in the early 70’s, and as a boy, I took many bus rides across the state to go to games with him. Here are some names from that era that I remember as being standout players.

You certainly can’t talk about NH hoop in the early-to-mid 70’s without putting Mike Flanagan at the top of the list. Others that I remember include:
Mike Applegate - Memorial
The Roche brothers – Dover
Paul Harvey – Portsmouth
The Watterson brothers – Keene
The Gureckis brothers – Nashua
The Dufour brothers – Nashua
Feel free to add more of your own.

I always wondered how many points Flanagan would have scored with a 3 pt line. He took some BOMBS.

Ron Beaurivage - played with Flanagan and Applegate.

Kennedy from Central.

Tommy Woodring- Trinity.

Gyms would be packed. These guys played the game the right way. I still say HS hoop play in NH has regressed in the last ten years. Even considering all the kids that have gone prep there is still ALOT of bad hoops being played in NH.

That was a little before my time but not by much. The standouts I remember most from my playing days were Skip Barry and James Best.

I think we could start a good debate regarding the question about the quality of play back then compared to what is going on today. Here is one mans humble opinion. I believe players today have a better opportunity to improve their skills and knowledge then players back in the day. What this has led to is a few really outstanding basketball players in NH. The problem is these outstanding players are usually plucked away by the prep schools which really weakens the pool. It does appear the overall quality of athletes has subsided somewhat. A few teams put 5 solid athletes on the floor but not too many. This seems to allow the limited number of outstanding players to rise quickly. Today, Freshman and Sophomores who have worked on their games are starting on their varsity teams more often then they did back in the day. Logic tells us everything improves with time and I believe this to a certain extent. We are more educated and have access to better training techniques so the athletes who take advantage of these resources tend to rise quickly through the ranks. When I was a kid we didn't sit around and play video games all day. Instead we played basketball, baseball and football with each other. Even my friends who weren't great athletes seemed to develop some skills and understanding of how to compete in athletics. I think thats what may be the missing piece today. We played sports with our friends because we didn't have anything else to do. My men's league team which is getting older and older still seems to beat the young teams we are playing on a regular basis. I'm always a bit surprised by this because it doesn't make sense. I am interested in hearing what some other people have to say about this topic.

Champ Simpson from Concord

Billy Haubrich-Concord

If you are feeling nostalgic..... read through these old newspapers - see links. Love perusing the papers and reading all the other goings-on back in the day. Couple links for Skip Barry from BG 1980s and Rich Shrigley from Nashua High 1978

Rich Shrigley Nashua Standout 1978

Skip Barry from 80s

Skip Barry 1983

Yes, I've seen a few of those articles. The Telegraph has the best on-line archive of all the NH newspapers. I wasn't a hoop player, but I played baseball against Rich Shrigley. He was a pretty good baseball player in addition to being an outstanding basketball player. Side note: in the May 11 entry in the Rich Shrigley link (Jim Ford's one-hitter), I was the 2nd out in the 7th inning just before his no-hitter was broken up with 2 outs in the 7th.

Now, if this hasn't bored you all to tears, nothing will!

Speaking of Skip Barry, if you scroll down to my forum post labeled "BG/Trinity...The Highlights" and watch it(or fast forward) all the way thru to the end of the video...you can see me standing in the hallway near the BG Hall of Fame right next to the Skip Barry plaque. I made mention of it in my post game recap. As for Shrigley, he was a star at Nashua and like Barry went on to play at Boston College. I graduated from Nashua in 1988 with Shrigley's little sister Becky who played on the '87 Lady Panthers team that was coached by John Fagula and was ranked #1 in the nation by USA Today. Missy Ayotte was a freshman point guard on that team...I think she's the younger sister of or somehow related to NH Senator Kelly Ayotte.

I too always wondered how many Flannagan, Guerekis, and Dufour would have scored with the 3.
Dufour was a scoring machine. I remember this kid in Jr. High putting up 40 plus a game for Fairgrounds.
One game I remember seeing, BG frosh vs FJH. Score was like 72-52. Dufour scores 56, but the best part 25 of 25 at the line. That kid could shoot.

They did play a few years for the Washington Generals...didn't win many games.

In the 1978 NBA draft, two players from Merrimack College were selected. Dana Skinner by the Celtics and Ed Murphy by the Atlanta Hawks. Neither made it out of camp on the NBA roster, but two players from a small college in N. Andover getting drafted is pretty impressive. They both were distributed the ball by the all time assist leader at Merrimack, Peter Dufour.

Mike Flanagan and Ron Beaurvage had great careers at UMASS. Some people do notknow that Mike played on the fresman team with Rick Pitino and Al Skinner(8 years in the NBA) and later coached at URI and BC. They needed fifth player so he played foward at 6'1''. Greet guy
Dana Skinner had a nice career at Merrimack and was a third round draft pick of the Celtics. I played against him in the NOrthShore legue. He later was the athletic director at Essex Agriculture. I believe he is the current AD at Umass lowell.
Shrigley cou;d play as well as his sister. She went to Iowa and played for Vivian
springer I believe, Rick was Big East rookie team his freshman year. His uncle was Norm Sloan coach at Floridda and NC State where hewon aNCAA championship with
david
thompson.

After his senior year Shrigley enrolled for a fifth year and played tight end on the football team.
His freshman year at BC was the team involved in the point shaving scandal that Henry Hill, of Goodfellas fame was involved with.
NHS had another alum who found himself on two teams where programs were dropped because of scandals. Farley Gates was at USF when the Quintin Dailey mess hit the fan and few years later he was at Tulane when their program was dropped thanks to a betting scandal that involved Hot Rod Williams. Farley was fortunate enough to parlay the game of his life into scholarship opportunnities. His Jr. year at NHS he outscored and outplayed Patrick Ewing in the Xmas tourney when scouts were there to see Ewing and Rumeal Robinson. I believe Cambridge R&L won the game, but everyone walked out of the gym talking about Farley that night.
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