A short writer remembers his days as a football student manager with his 7-foot friend

It took only one look at a picture featuring former National Basketball Association players 7-foot-7 Manute Bol and 5-foot-7 Spud Webb to bring me back more than four decades to the 1980 South Dakota high school football season.

I came across the picture recently while searching the Public Opinion archives for my "20 Favorites" series highlighting some of my favorite Watertown and area high school athletes in a variety of sports since I started working here in December of 1984.

Bol, a native of Sudan and one of the tallest players ever to play in the NBA, and Webb, one of the smallest players to ever play in the NBA and the winner of the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk contest, weren't necessarily linked in 1980. They both started NBA careers in 1985 and played at least 10 years in pro ball. They were two of my favorite players, mainly because of their height or lack of it.

So why do Manute and Spud have anything to do with my recollection of South Dakota high school football that fateful fall in 1980? Let me explain. It makes sense when you see the picture and see how much taller Manute is than Spud.

That's the way it was for the two student managers for Huron High School's football team in 1980. I was one of those student managers and the other was my good friend Mike Shanks. I was a senior and he was a junior.

Now get this. That winter I was listed at 5-foot-11 on the Huron High School boys basketball roster. The only player on the team who was under 6-foot. The last statement is true. The one before it isn't. Let's just say in one of the handful of games I played before I walked away from the team that winter (yes I quit and yes they went on to win the state big-school championship) I guarded a Yankton player who was listed at 5-4. I looked up to him, if you catch my drift.

And Shanks, the youngest of three Shanks brothers who played high school basketball for Huron in the 70s and early 1980s. Mike, well, he was 7-foot tall. He was the tallest player on the 1981 state champion Tigers' squad that included 6-9 Craig Dudley and a bunch of 6-4 and 6-5 guys including Mike Busch, Ken Konst and Joe Skorheim.

Anyway, back to the football story. So you have me (legitimately under 5-4) and Mike (legitimately 7-foot). And we spent the fall serving as the student managers for the Huron High School football team under head coach Steve Swisher.

It went down like this.

"If you guys think you're going to get to use the high school gym all fall to get ready for the basketball season, then I need you to be the student managers for football," Swisher told, or perhaps even threatened, us.

We didn't have a choice. My only regret now is that nobody ever took a picture of myself and Mike together. You know, like the Manute and Spud photo circulated by The Associated Press.

I will say this, it has to be some kind of record. Maybe a Guinness Book of World Records record. The tallest and shortest student managers ever for a high school football team (if not universally or throughout the U.S., at least in South Dakota). I'm serious. Two student mangers, with one nearly two-feet taller than the other. You don't see that every day.

Maybe my memory is letting me down, but I only really remember two other things about that fall high school football season when Merriam and Shanks divided time in the gym with time as football student managers. I'm sure we traveled with the team for road games, but maybe I've blocked those memories.

Here's what I do remember. One was when Coach Swisher gave Mike and I the bag of good footballs and asked us to guard them with our lives. It was the bag of footballs that went with the team to all games and it likely included some game balls.

The Shanks-Merriam manager tandem put the balls in our equipment room and did our best to hide them from everybody else. The next day they were gone. Oh, I can't in good conscience write anything but maybe a few short words (a, the, etc.) of the friendly chat we had with Coach Swisher after he realized the bag of balls was gone.

We didn't lose them. Turns out assistant coach Larry "Moose" Wendt, the Huron High School coach with the same excitable nature as Watertown's legendary Virg Polak, had taken them and put them in his locker. Wendt would often give speeches to fire up the Tigers, just like Polak did for the Arrows.

Anyway, the crisis was averted. Merriam and Shanks were allowed to live and to resume their basketball training/student-manager duties. But soon, there was another crisis for the Tigers.

It came a couple of days before Huron's second game of the season, a road visit to perennial Eastern South Dakota Conference power Yankton. The Bucks and Watertown's Arrows would often battle for the league title.

Huron's football hopes ended in a practice that week when Busch, a senior quarterback who was one of the best in the state, injured his finger when it hit another player's helmet on a follow through in practice. His season was over.

I remember we moved another good friend of mine, Tom Deneke, from tight end to quarterback. Now Tom's brother Daryl had quarterbacked Huron to the 1978 ESD title, but Tom hadn't played the position for a few years because Busch was our QB. Tom did an admirable job, but basically we hurt two positions and that's something the 1980 Tigers couldn't overcome.

20 Favorites Series: Links to the stories highlighting the best northeastern South Dakota athletes since 1984

Just how good was Busch? He went to Idaho State, which was a Division 1AA national power at that time, before coming back to set passing records at South Dakota State. He later played in the National Football League games as as a replacement player for players who went on strike during the 1987 season. Busch led the New York Giants to a comeback win on Monday Night football.

At least Busch has some legitimate football memories that are worth remembering and has his very own Wikipedia page. It's not that way for Shanks and Merriam, save for this lone personal column written some 43 years later.

In my nearly 40 years at the Public Opinion, I want to thank all the high school student managers who have ever assisted me in doing my job and thank them for their efforts. It isn't quite the same anymore since most of the statistics are all done electronically and sent by email by the coaches. I just wanted people to know I was an athlete, but I also was a student manager.

All athletes and coaches should thank those student managers for all they do to help out a team during a high school season.

Really, in regards to this story, that's the long and short of it.

Follow Watertown Public Opinion sports reporter Roger Merriam on X (formerly known as Twitter) @PO_Sports or email: rmerriam@thepublicopinion.com

This article originally appeared on Watertown Public Opinion: Column comparing Manute Bol and Spud Webb to Huron duo in 1980