When the Bayfield High School boys basketball team won its game against Durango earlier this month, it was historic – the win was only the second ever against Durango basketball.
But the first win in 1949? Now that was really historic.
One member of that team still remembers the event, particularly since it came after a 55-24 loss to Durango earlier in the season.
“We were proud of that win,” said Jim Frahm, a life-long resident of Bayfield, noting that BHS was a tiny school at the time – he had only 17 people in his graduating class.
The win came before the towns were split into different classifications in the 1950s. In 1949, towns played anyone in their area, although the Wolverines did travel to Sanford and Kirtland, New Mexico, for games as well, winning the Kirtland tournament that season.
The historic win against Durango was on Feb. 12, according to the 1949 edition of the Wolverine, the BHS yearbook.
“Our boys made history by defeating the Durango Demons 42-35 before a capacity crowd of Bayfielders and Durangoans,” Frahm said. “The townspeople played the game over and over all night and all the next day.”
Frahm said that big game came after wins over Silverton, which fielded a tough team that year. The Silverton players had a trick up their sleeve for their home games, Frahm remembered. At halftime, they would open the doors of the gym to let freezing air inside. The floor was warm from first-half play, and the cold air formed a thin sheet of ice on the floor, and the Silverton players had more experience playing on the slick surface.
That 1948-49 season was also Bayfield’s first played in the new gym at school, which had been built by volunteer labor and fundraising by community members. In November, Bayfield hosted the first basketball tournament in the gym. Silverton, the Indian School, Ignacio, Mancos and Pagosa Springs played, with Silverton winning the tournament.
“It was one of the nicest gyms in the area,” Frahm said of Bayfield’s gym, which is still in use for middle school and parks and rec games. The Bayfield gym had a larger floor than the old gym at Durango High School, which is now the Durango 9-R administration building on 12th Street.
Frahm was a starter that year, along with being an editor of the yearbook and the class salutatorian. To his knowledge, Frahm is the last senior on the team who is still alive, although he’s not sure if one classmate is living or not. All of the girls in his class have passed away. Other members of the team were Stanley Steele, Donald McIntyre, Bill Huntington, Neil Snooks, Kenneth McCoy, Don Fair, Howard Fahrion, Woody Emerson and Buster Walker. Harold Leplatt was the manager. The team’s coach, Aaron Baker, was also the district superintendent.
Bayfield went on to defeat Silverton that season to win the San Juan Basin Class B championship.
Frahm went on to success, as he graduated from Arizona State University and became a pilot in the U.S. Navy. On a flight to Hawaii, he met a pretty stewardess, Ellen, from northern Indiana. They dated for a while in Hawaii, then married in 1958. They moved to Allison to ranch, where she taught in Ignacio and he served as a postal carrier and was president of the La Plata-Archuleta Cattlemen’s Association. He also was a founding member of the Pine River Valley Heritage Society and has devoted countless hours volunteering in the museum in downtown Bayfield.
He and Ellen now live at Evenings Porch Assisted Living in Bayfield.
