The impromptu state championship victory by tiny Melrose, an Irish settlement of 450 in southeast Iowa, is one of the great stories of the Iowa High School Athletic Association. In 1937, Melrose roared through the state basketball tournament and surprised Marshalltown to win the title on March 27.
Melrose was one of 16 teams to battle for the state championship at the old Drake Fieldhouse in Des Moines. In those days, eight Class A schools, with enrollment of more than 100 students, and eight Class B schools, with fewer than 100 students, qualified for the tournament.
The 1937 Shamrock were virtually unknown when the season began. And even by the time the tournament rolled around, the team’s chances seemed so slim that newspaper and radio stations had done little to prepare for the prospects of covering the boys from Shamrock . The player’s names were often misspelled and radio announcers couldn’t agree on a way to pronounce Coach Adolf Hlubeck’s last name. (It’s pronounced Loo-Beck.) The team’s picture wasn’t even included in the official tournament program.
Hlubek was fond of telling reporters that everything he knew about basketball he learned from a 10 cent rule book the IHSAA sold to coaches. But he was actually a student of the game, and closely followed all the best college programs of the day, borrowing liberally from their playbooks to create his game plan. Hlubek’s primary job was as the superintendent of schools in Melrose. A graduate of Columbia College in Dubuque, he held coaching jobs in Fort Atkinson and Exline before moving to Melrose.
Hlubek had never coached a team past the sectionals when the season began in 1937. The media loved him because of he eccentricities: he carried a stopwatch along the sidelines because he didn’t trust timekeepers; when he was interviewed live on the radio after the final game, he told the announcer that he felt faint and then said into the microphone, “Hello Ma, hello Pa.” Hlubeck brought his team back to the state tournament a year later and eventually coached at several other schools before retiring in Camanche.
No one on the team was taller than 5-10 except for junior center Jim Thynne, who stood 6-3. The team was lead by Walt O’Conner, who was known by the media as “Wee Walt”. Walt scored 31 points during the state tournament and went on to play basketball, football and baseball at Drake University. He also played minor league baseball and in his first professional at-bat, got a hit against left-handed hall-of-famer Warren Spahn.
The team had a host of secret weapons, the Rev. D.C. Browne, a local Catholic priest who was the Shamrock’s number one fan. He occasionally scouted opponents for coach Hlubek; during the games his wild encouragement rallied the team and townspeople.
The Melrose Shamrock’s were 29-0 when they entered the state tournament, but they were considered underdogs against Geneseo Township, a small school in Cerro Gordo County. The trip to Des Moines and the chance to play in front of thousands of fans at the state tournament was a thrill for the small-town boys. According to one account of the opening game, a few of the players were so intent on impressing the crowd that they greased back their hair, but soon found that the styling ointment was making it difficult for them to handle the ball. After some halftime adjustments, including a rinse for some of the boys, Melrose battled back to win, 35 - 34.
During the second game, Melrose was forced to depend on just five players because of injuries but still managed to beat Class A Newton by a score of 20-15. The semifinal game against Rolfe matched two unbeaten teams, Melrose with 31 wins and Rolfe with 29. Melrose won the game – the first of two it played that day – 29-13.
The state championship game that night featured Marshalltown, with a school enrollment of 1,077 in a town of 17,367, versus Melrose, with 420 people and 66 high school students. Hlubek tried to keep his boys loose between games by steering them away from the tournament. They spent their spare time downtown, instead of at the Drake Fieldhouse, going to movies and riding the escalator at Younkers Department Store.
Tickets to the game against Marshalltown sold out almost as soon as they went on sale. The fieldhouse was packed with 7,800 fans for the final game. The team was shorthanded because of injuries during the game against Newton and general fatique following an afternoon semi-final contest.
Another one of the Shamrock’s secret weapons was a fatigue-antidote that Hlubek believed in. At halftime, just prior to the start of the third quarter, the team trainer would apply an ointment to the lower back because of a belief that “fatigue sets in the gluteus maximus.” They would need it for the final game; Hlubek played just five boys during the final game, in part because he became overexcited in the third quarter and had to be led off the court, suffering what was known in those days as a conniption fit. None of his assistance dared change the line-up, even as Melrose stretched its lead.
The game started as a seesaw battle with Marshalltown in the lead after the first quarter, 8-7 and Melrose in front at the end of the half, 14-12. But at the start of the third quarter, Melrose went on an 15-2 run and led at the start of the final quarter by a score of 29-14. It was during the scoring surge that Hlubek suffered his “conniption fit” but it didn’t distract the Shamrocks. When he returned in the fourth, both teams were concentrating on defense after the rowdy third quarter. Melrose scored six in the final stanza compared to Marshalltown, who scored three. When the final buzzer sounded, Melrose was the smallest school to ever win a state title after claiming the 35-17 victory.
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