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Iroquois Sports Parade

The Bemus Point basketball team this year is undefeated to date. They will have to wait just one more day to find out whether or not they will have a perfect season. The Bemus kids were to have closed out their regular season tonight with a league game against Cassadaga Valley, however, the weather interfered and caused both schools to cancel classes for this day and the respective athletic departments have decided that it would be best not to try and travel tonight. The two clubs will close out the regular season with their game at Bemus tomorrow night.

Every once in a while a story comes along the sports beat, one that deserves recognition between our sports bookends, and the Bemus story of the last year is one of the better ones to talk about. With the Bemus Point School Board already involved in the building of a new building, I can only hope that the plans for that new building call for a couple of additional trophy cases. The school is going to need them if they keep up their present pace in the field of athletics. Not too many institutions can boast of going unbeaten in every sport they have fielded a team in for the entire year. But with the current edition of Mel Lewellen’s Basketball Club, that’s the story from Bemus tonight. The night before they close their regular season campaign and await the Section Six Playoffs. The kids at Bemus, and their coaches are used to winning. It has been 12 months since the Bemus Point Colors have been beaten. The last club to turn the trick was Barker High School, in the Section Six Basketball Playoffs last year ---the semi-finals at that.

Since that time, Mel Lewellen’s Baseball Club last spring breezed through a dozen or so games and brought home the Section Six Title. Also last spring, Jim Lucey’s golf squad won 14 matches and another section title. And then just last fall, the Bemus Point Football Team marched through 8 games undefeated and now the Basketball boys have rung up 17 straight wins. And will be going after win number 18 tomorrow night. All told, my friends, this adds up to 51 straight wins, and what about the kids that made it all possible? For the most part, the five starters on this year’s basketball club are representative of those responsible for this truly outstanding record. Bob Gustafson, a basketball starter and also the football quarterback and first baseman of the baseball team. Paul Carlton, same three sports, football guard, and second baseman on the baseball field as well as excelling in basketball. Terry Woodfield, basketball starter, fullback on the football club and catcher on the baseball team. Bob Swanson, basketball and football, Ray Head, basketball and golf. And so it goes, yes, there are others…..too numerous to mention….a truly outstanding record by what must be the surely one of the outstanding athletic classes in the history of any high school, unbeaten in sports since last year. And for those of you who will have some doubts about this, the school does not have a wrestling team and last spring did not have a track team.

Fifty-one straight, through the baseball, golf, football and basketball seasons, and tomorrow they go for number 52. Yes, I certainly do hope that the Bemus School Board has allowed room in the new school for all the trophies. Come to think of it, maybe they could set aside a special trophy case just for the athletic teams of this year. The kids deserve it. They must have worked hard. Winning Streaks of this magnitude do not come easily.


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