Six-Man Prep Basketball Team Regularly Rules Its Conference

A transplanted Hoosier has cultivated a winning basketball tradition at tiny Phelps High School, where the varsity roster lists just six full-time players.

“Usually if you win big, you put in subs,” Coach Joe Turpin said recently. “Well, we don’t have any.”

Turpin has six players who participate solely in varsity games; two more split time between junior varsity and varsity.

That can make scrimmages difficult, so three faculty members and some former players are on call to join the team for practice when needed.

“If we get in foul trouble, we have real problems,” said the 35-year-old Turpin, who came to this Wisconsin-Michigan border town in 1974 and became coach in 1975. “Our kids know they can’t foul, and they know they can’t screw up.

“They know they have to be in better shape--good enough to go the whole game, every game.”

Phelps isn’t the smallest high school in Wisconsin--Washington Island School has 25 students--but it’s the smallest boys basketball-playing school in the state. Phelps High has 47 students, 22 of them male.

The entire Phelps school system is contained in one building: the old gym is on the first floor, the grade school on the second and the high school on the third.

There has been talk of consolidation with larger schools, but the citizens of Phelps won’t have it.

“I have no proof, but I think it’s the town’s pride in sports,” Turpin said. “They take pride in this, and they feel it’s theirs.”

This season, the Knights are shooting for their fifth straight title in the Northern Lakes Conference.

“We’re proud and we brag,” said Opel Laak, one of the village’s 700 residents. “But we think we brag rightfully so.”

Added another resident, Sharon Fecteau: “The kids don’t want to lose because they feel they’ll disappoint the town . . . and they will.”

Although villagers clamor for victories, Turpin says he doesn’t stress winning above all else.

Turpin in one year of assistant coaching at Eastern Washington High School discovered an evil in Indiana’s prep basketball tradition.

“I saw how cutthroat it was,” said Turpin, a former player at Butler. “It wasn’t a game anymore. It was a lot like college. I didn’t want the situation.”

Turpin moved north, but didn’t leave his love for basketball behind. When Phelps Coach Larry Haarala quit in 1975, Turpin again put the coach’s whistle around his neck.

“It’s just right here,” Turpin said. “It’s laid back. If you win, it’s nice. If you don’t, oh well.”