They played, they thrived, and a half-century later, they’re still together
1970-71 Oregon State Rooks. From left, manager Harvey Berkey, Steve Soike, Doug Oxsen, Mark Henjum, Patrick Quigg, Carl Runyon, Steve Ericksen, assistant coach Jim Jarvis, Dean Ferree, Ron Jones
Updated 12/7/2023 11:00 AM
In 1970, Ralph Miller came from Iowa to become the head basketball coach at Oregon State, replacing Paul Valenti. The 1970-71 Rooks were Miller’s first freshman team — and next-to-last. In 1972, freshmen were made eligible for varsity basketball, and the freshman team was replaced by the junior varsity squad. A few years later, that was done away with, too.
On that first Rooks team were four scholarship players — center Steve Ericksen, forward Doug Oxsen and guards Ron Jones and Steve Soike — along with a collection of walk-ons. Ericksen was Oregon Class AAA Player of the Year as a senior at Beaverton High; Soike was two-time Washington Class AAA Player of the Year at Aberdeen High.
The Rooks were coached by varsity assistant Dave Leach, who was assisted by Jim Jarvis, a former standout on Oregon State’s Final Four team of 1963. The Rooks went 19-4, averaged 89.2 points per game and prepared five players for varsity action over the next few seasons.
Fifty-two years later, over an extended happy hour at Langdon Farms Golf Club in Aurora, eight players, Jarvis and team manager Harvey Berkey convened for two hours of shared memories, stories, laughs and lies. Carl Runyon flew in from the Bay Area. Dean Ferree drove up from Arizona.
I served as unofficial moderator for this reunion at the behest of Patrick Quigg, the team’s sixth man and ringleader of keeping the group together through all these years. Quigg has become a sponsor of kerryeggers.com — thank you, Patrick — but he didn’t have to twist my arm at all to be a part of an evening with this special group. All of them are in their early 70’s except Jarvis, who is 80 but in great shape and fits right in with the gang. They have kept in touch through all of these years.
An introduction to the characters:
Steve Ericksen, the Rooks’ leading scorer and rebounder. At right is reserve Dean Ferree
STEVE ERICKSEN. Hometown: Beaverton. Current residence: Tigard.
The 6-11 Ericksen had been recruited by all Pac-8 schools except UCLA. “I was kind of a homebody,” he says. “Oregon and Oregon State interested me. A lot of my buddies went to Oregon. My parents thought Oregon State was the better spot. Ralph was coming with a great reputation.”
Ericksen was the star of the 1970-71 Rooks, averaging 23.0 points and 15.7 rebounds. Heading into his sophomore year, Sports Illustrated described Steve as “a budding star with matinee idol looks.” He would average 13.5 points and 7.6 rebounds but didn’t match those numbers his final two seasons as a varsity player at OSU.
“Ralph and I were not a great fit,” Ericksen says. “We clashed a bit. You encourage me and I’ll run through a wall for you. It was seven things right and two things wrong, and he’d beat you over the head with it.”
Ericksen was drafted in the fifth round of the 1974 NBA draft by Golden State and played professionally in Europe for a while. His professional non-basketball career was mostly in real estate and commercial appraising.
Harvey Berkey, Doug Oxsen and Steve Ericksen share a story
DOUG OXSEN. Hometown: Walnut Creek, Calif. Current residence: Corvallis.
The 6-10 Oxsen, offered rides by California, Washington State, Pacific and USF, chose Oregon State because of Miller and assistant coach Jimmy Anderson. “Also because of the pharmacy school, and I wanted to play in the Pac-8,” he said.
Oxsen averaged 15.4 points and 9.5 rebounds for the Rooks, then went on to three varsity seasons at OSU after a redshirt year, starting much of the time as a junior and senior. After two years touring with Athletics in Action, Oxsen worked 19 years with Universal Gym, ending as director of marketing. After six years in the same position with Bike-E, Oxsen started a 16-year stint in 2002 as a fund-raiser for athletics with the OSU Foundation.
Steve Soike displays shooting form taught to him by Jim Jarvis. Soike is flanked by Dean Ferree and Carl Runyon
STEVE SOIKE. Hometown: Aberdeen, Wash. Current residence: Bellevue, Wash.
The 6-4 1/2 southpaw was recruited by many schools, including Washington, Stanford and UCLA. He chose Oregon State because of Miller and the chance to play for “a progressive offensive team.” Soike averaged 16.9 points and 5.2 rebounds with the Rooks, but suffered an ACL injury before his sophomore season and never played a varsity game for the Beavers. He played two seasons of baseball as a first baseman and pitcher at Puget Sound but never played professionally. Through his career after athletics, he has owned a clothing store, worked in mortgage lending and, for the last 17 years, run a limousine company.
Ron Jones may have been the greatest all-around athlete on the 1970-71 Rooks
RON JONES. Hometown: Madras. Current residence: Vancouver, Wash.
The 6-4 Jones turned down an offer from Oregon to sign with Oregon State. “My high school coach, Fred Sandgren, had pitched for the Ducks baseball team,” Jones said. “But because of anti-Vietnam War demonstrations on campus (at Oregon) at the time, he advised me to take OSU’s offer.” Jones averaged 13.7 points with the Rooks, then played three seasons of varsity for the Beavers, much of the time serving as a starter.
Drafted by the Blazers in the ninth round of the 1974 draft, Jones was cut in tryouts and launched a long high school teaching and coaching career that took him from Grant High in Sacramento to the Chemawa Indian School in Salem to a 24-year run at Barlow High.
Carl Runyon earned the fifth starting spot as a walk-on for the 1970-71 Rooks
CARL RUNYON. Hometown: El Sobrante, Calif. Current residence: Martinez, Calif.
The 6-foot Runyon came to Oregon State as a walk-on and wound up a starter, averaging 11.6 points for the Rooks. After a season at Spokane Falls Community College, Runyon returned to OSU, redshirted and then played two seasons as a scholarship player and backup guard.
After graduation with a degree in general science, he worked three years for the engineering department of the city of Richmond (Calif.). Runyon wound up attending dental school, earning his DMD degree at Tufts. He has worked for the last 33 years in oral and maxillofacial surgery in the Walnut Creek and Danville area of the east Bay Area.
Forward Patrick Quigg, the Rooks’ coordinator and connector
PATRICK QUIGG. Hometown: Hoquiam, Wash. Current residence: Hoquiam.
Offered a scholarship at Gonzaga — it wasn’t quite the Gonzaga we know back then — the 6-7 Quigg chose to walk on at Oregon State. Jimmy Anderson is from Hoquiam, and so, too, was OSU assistant football coach Mike Dolby.
Quigg became the Rooks’ sixth man and occasional starter, averaging 5.9 points and 4.1 rebounds. He chose not to go out for basketball as a sophomore, quitting school after winter term. He transferred to Washington and got his degree in accounting in 1975. Patrick began work with the family business — Quigg Bros Construction — and continues today as a “mostly retired” co-owner with a fourth-generation company that has been in business for more than 100 years.
MARK HENJUM. Hometown: Silverton. Current residence: Silverton.
The 6-foot Henjum attended a tryout session for the Rook team that fall and made it as a walk-on. Henjum would later play two years of varsity ball, earning a tuition scholarship as a senior.
After getting his wildlife science degree, Henjum worked for the Oregon State Game Mission for a year and a half before spending 30 years with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in La Grande. The last three years were spent overseeing construction of a wolf plan for the state of Oregon. Henjum moved back to Silverton in 2013.
DEAN FERREE. Hometown: Canoga Park, California. Current residence: Lakeside, Ariz.
The 6-4 Ferree made the Rooks as a walk-on but spent only one year at Oregon State, transferring first to L.A. Valley JC and finally to Cal State Northridge, where he got his degree in accounting. He spent 20 years in independent newspaper distribution for the L.A. Times and another 10 years working in the distribution department for The Oregonian in Wilsonville and Clackamas. While in Southern California, Ferree pursued an acting career and held a Screen Actors Guild card for 16 years. While in Oregon, he lived in Aurora, Clackamas, Seaside and Astoria. He retired and moved to Arizona in 2021.
HARVEY BERKEY. Hometown: Beaverton. Current residence: Hillsboro.
Berkey, who started at Oregon State in the fall of 1969, had served as manager for the basketball team at Sunset High (coach John Wittenberg wrote a letter of recommendation for him.). As a freshman, Berkey served as assistant varsity manager under Paul Valenti. The next year (1970-71), he was assistant manager for the varsity and manager for the Rooks. Berkey would serve three years as head varsity manager. He then moved to the Portland area and worked in circulation and advertising sales for newspapers for 35 years before retiring in 2017.
Jim Jarvis had been a standout on the Beavers’ Final Four team of 1963 and a professional baseball and basketball player before serving as assistant coach for the 1970-71 Rooks. He is flanked by Mark Henjum and Harvey Berkey
JIM JARVIS. Hometown: Roseburg. Current residence: Corvallis.
Jarvis averaged 21.1 points as a senior at Oregon State in 1964-65, then played two years in the ABA, winning and ABA title with Pittsburgh. He also played one season of Class A pro baseball, mostly with the Eugene Emeralds. Jarvis coached basketball for three years at Spokane Falls CC and four years at Idaho before selling real estate in central Oregon for 30 years. He moved back to Corvallis in 2016.
DAVE NISHITANI. Hometown: Nyssa. Current residence: Corvallis.
Nishitani has no direct connection to the 1970-71 Rooks other than he was attending school at Oregon State at the time, and shot photos of those Rooks after they moved on to play varsity in ensuing seasons. Nish was basketball manager at Nyssa High and came to Oregon State in 1968. He began shooting photographs for the OSU athletic department in 1972 and started working full-time for the OSU Bookstore in 1973. He eventually became manager of the photo department and ran the photo lab, then worked retail in electronics until retirement in 2013. A decade later, he continues to shoot photos at Beaver sporting events. Master sergeant Nishitani also did 37 years with the National Guard and Army Reserves. Nish shot the photos for this piece.
As we moved from topic to topic, some roles became clear. Quigg was the connector and coordinator, Soike the clown prince, Jones the athlete who could do it all. Ericksen and Henjum were quiet and reserved but enjoyed the banter. Jarvis was like the big brother, offering perspective the others didn’t have.
I started by asking if any of the scholarship players had been recruited by Valenti’s staff, which had included Jimmy Anderson.
From the 1971 Beaver Yearbook, about the 1970-71 Rooks cagers
QUIGG: Jimmy did all the recruiting.
SOIKE: When he came to Aberdeen to recruit me, Jimmy said, “Let’s go to Miller Junior High and play one-on-one.” He beat me the first game like 20-10. The second game, all I did was back him down. I still only beat him by two.
JONES: Jimmy knew Patrick because he was from the same area.
QUIGG: Jimmy had tried to recruit my brother (John), who played at Washington. Jimmy wanted John to play basketball and Mike Dolby wanted him to play football. John is going, “Oh no, no, no. I’m not getting anywhere close to football (in college) ever again.”
JARVIS: My dad was the basketball coach at Coquille. After my sophomore year we moved to Roseburg. Bill Harper was the Roseburg basketball and baseball coach. After my senior year, Harper resigned the basketball job and they hired dad to be the basketball coach. Now I’m playing baseball for Harper, who had played and then coached at Oregon State. They didn’t have to go very far to recruit me.
Dave Leach, now 80, lives in Bend and was unable to attend the confab at Langdon Farms. Leach, a McPherson, Kan., native who had played basketball for Miller at Wichita State, sent an email message to the group:
“Dear Team: As I sit here reminiscing about the Rooks team that launched the Ralph Miller era at OSU, there is satisfaction that for the most part, all of you achieved at a level at which you can be proud. It is my hope that you have known that same success in your chosen professions. I hope you have known love and the love of another. I hope some of those special dreams that you dreamed as a young man have come true. Enjoy your time together and try to keep your stories as close to the truth as possible without hurting its entertainment value. It was a privilege to be your coach! Thank you — Dave Leach
QUIGG: Dave Leach is a wonderful human being.
RUNYON: He was fair. He worked us hard. He didn’t sugar-coat things, but he didn’t beat you down, either.
JONES: And I don’t remember him ever smoking on the basketball floor. (Laughs all around. That was something for which Miller was famous.)
FERREE: I don’t know if his knowledge of the game was the same as Ralph’s, but it was pretty high. Everybody really liked him and wanted to win for him.
QUIGG: It was funny to me that he had that Midwest twang. He’d say something, and you couldn’t laugh, but you’d think, “Where’d that come from?”
FERREE: He had an acerbic personality. He would make comments to you. I remember when we played the Medical-Dental School in Portland. I wasn’t expecting to play because I was eighth or ninth man. I’d been partying all night long and didn’t get to bed until 5 in the morning. Ten minutes in, Coach Leach puts me in the game. I blow a layup. Afterward, he says, “and that’s why you’re not playing.”
OXSEN: I remember when he said, “What you have to do is harass, harass, harass, harass until they say, ‘Here, take the ball. I don’t want to play.’ ”
SOIKE: Which is exactly what Oregon did in our first game with them at their place. The second half, they didn’t even come down the court with us.
OXSEN: They quit.
SOIKE: They did utter the most famous one-liner I’ve heard in basketball to my good friend Patrick. It was a timeout. They were shooting at the free throw line. Eldridge Broussard said to his running mate across from him, Billy Ingram, “Hey Billy. Who got ‘The Fish?’ ” We all started laughing, including Patrick. We didn’t know who the hell he was talking about. Finally we realized after we creamed them that he was talking about Pat.
QUIGG: So we’re playing the next game, and suddenly Soike yells, “Hey Fish. You got that guy.”
Quigg has another story involving Soike.
QUIGG: We’re playing at Oregon and I’m at the foul line. Some Duck fan yells, “Quigg, you were no good at Hoquiam and you’ll be no good at Oregon State, too.” As we’re running back upcourt, Soike tells me, “I agree with him.” We both start laughing.
SOIKE: I plead the Fifth. I honestly don’t remember that one. Even in jest, I don’t think I would have said something like that.
Quigg and Soike grew up in sister towns in Washington; about three miles apart. They are like brothers. Soike tells me privately, “Patrick Quigg is a great friend. He’s been a friend of mine since the third grade. We didn’t have a gym at our little school, so we went to Hoquiam to play against the grade-school kids there. Pat and I were jumping center. He said, ‘You’re left-handed, aren’t you?”’ So we shook hands left-handed, and for 60 years, we’ve been shaking hands left-handed whenever we meet. I had the good fortune recently to go to his 50th wedding anniversary, and he walked up and gave me a hug and shook my left hand. The celebration was held in the same little gym where we had met in third grade.”
OXSEN: Coach Leach was fair. He was honest — straight up with people. But he liked to make sure that we worked hard, were in shape and all that stuff. I had never experienced anything like the defensive positioning drill — forward, back, left, right — from the first day of practice. He said, “We’re going to keep progressing with this until we get to 20 minutes of this.”
RUNYON: That first practice, he put us in that drill. When we finally stopped, everybody was dead. And Leach said, “How long do you think you went?” We had gone for two minutes. I thought it was 20.
OXSEN: He also felt it was important to do a lot of preseason running. He took us out on the track to run. We’re out there on the cinder track. “We’re going to do some 220s, 440s and 880s. Line up over here.”
QUIGG: The 220s were the last of them. We had to run six 220s. I’d never run anything in my life on a track. We would still be on that track running if it wasn’t for (varsity guard) Billy Nickleberry. We thought the track was 220 yards long. I looked at my time and figured it was pretty close to that of my buddy who ran the 220 for Hoquiam High. I thought, ‘This can’t be.’ When Billy broke Tommie Smith’s 220 world record during his run, a light bulb went off. We found out the track was short. We were running 165 yards instead of 220.
OXSEN: We come back to Gill and Ralph goes, “Well, how did my cherubs do today?” He looks at the times and said, “I don’t know whether we’re going to have a good basketball team, but we’ve got a heck of a track team.” We were running one-fifth of a mile instead of a quarter mile.
QUIGG: The next day we had to run real 220s. They were brutal.
FERREE: We also had to run steps. Anybody know how many steps it was to the top of Gill? 74. That number is etched in my brain.
SOIKE: We had to run the mile before the first practice. Jones screwed it up for all of us because we were graded on the curve.
QUIGG: The bottom of the heap was 6:30. We had to run it in that time or better or we had to run it again. Leach didn’t stutter until I was trying to get in under the wire. He’s looking at his stopwatch going, “S-s-s-s-ix 19, s-s-s-s-ix …. 20.” He didn’t want to have to watch me run it again.
JONES: My senior year, Tim Hennessy decided he was going to beat me. He trained and trained. We came to the mile run and he took off like a bat out of hell. He was going to build up such a lead I wasn’t going to be able to catch him. I didn’t want him to beat me. I ran him down, caught him on the last lap and ran 4:24. That was my fastest mile.
SOIKE: After we finished, we were all bent over in pain. Jones was hardly winded. He didn’t sweat. He didn’t get tired.
QUIGG: I occasionally perspired kind of heavy. During a practice, somebody threw me the ball and, with my cat-quick hands, I didn’t catch it. The ball hit my chest, which was soaked with sweat. Now the ball was dripping wet, and Jones said, “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” He’s sitting there with a coat and tie on playing and not getting tired.
JARVIS: He was probably as good a natural athlete I ever played with. He made everything look easy.
OXSEN: He could run forever.
RUNYON: For those of us who didn’t have the stamina that Ron had, we had … Patrick. If things were really tough in the drills where you had no gas left, all of a sudden you’d hear, “Time out! Coach, I have a question.”
QUIGG: We would do a three-man weave, and if a guy missed a lay-in, you would have to do it again. I had to occasionally have something clarified for me. I played a lot of basketball and I was pretty good, but I always felt I was the slowest man ever to play the game of basketball. Leach said, “Quigg, it makes my heart soar to watch you attempt to run up and down the court.”
Ralph Miller’s philosophy was what he called “Pressure Basketball.” Leach followed the same principles.
OXSEN: Full-court press. Push the ball up and down the court.
FERREE: It was all based on conditioning. There are 20 minutes a half. (The opponent) was pooped out by 18. If we were behind, we would make up all the points in the last two minutes.
QUIGG: We practiced on something that you don’t see anymore — how to make an entry pass out to the side to start a fast break. The off guard comes to center court and the trailers run down the sides to fill the lanes. It worked.
JONES: Ball never touches the ground.
RUNYON: No dribbling.
QUIGG: When did that go out of style? You watch a game now, the guy dribbles down the side instead of having the ball in the middle with lots of options.
JARVIS: What changed at Oregon State was the arrival of Gary Payton. He just brought it up himself, however he wanted to.
During the 1970-71 season, the Rooks lost only to the Oregon Medical-Dental School (99-90), Grays Harbor CC (91-68), Clark CC (88-87) and the last of four matchups with the Oregon Frosh (82-58). Losing the two close games is understandable. Any explanation for the two one-sided losses?
SOIKE: The game at Grays Harbor? We started Pat.
QUIGG: We had the two local boys on the team, so I got to start. At that game, a true story — Ericksen forgot his shoes. It was our first road game.
ERICKSEN: Not this again. (Laughter all around)
QUIGG: We wore white Converse All-Stars at Hoquiam. I didn’t know what a black high-top shoe was until I got to Oregon State. I told Steve, “I’ll call my brother; he’s home from college. He wears size 15, same as you.” I go get the shoes, take them back and give them to Ericksen and he says, “These are Converse. I play with Adidas shoes.” (Place erupts in laughter)
QUIGG: Dave Leach went wild.
ERICKSEN: It was a different time.
SOIKE: Steve’s the first one in the portal.
QUIGG: Look at the scoring total for that game. Ron Jones, zero. Didn’t happen before or since. He got in foul trouble. Steve (Ericksen) got in foul trouble. With 10 minutes gone, there was nobody left. It was bad.
RUNYON: We got hosed by the officials. It wasn’t good.
FERREE: It wasn’t even subtle. We knew from the get-go they were out to get those two guys.
QUIGG: Actually, Grays Harbor had a great team. They were undefeated when they played us.
SOIKE: They played dirty, and they were racking (Quigg) up all night long. I couldn’t go in and save him because I didn’t want to get in any trouble with my hometown peeps.
BERKEY: They had 6-9 Craig Martin from Corvallis, so they had some size.
SOIKE: We did rebound and had a great game against Washington the next night in Seattle (won 92-79).
But Ralph was yelling from the stands, “Soike, get in front of the Machine. Don’t let him have the key!” He was talking about their top scorer, Ray Price. I said, “He has scored only 36, Coach. It’s OK.”
QUIGG: We were told there had never been a sweep in the Rook-Frosh series. (In those years the teams always played four games — two at home, two away). We went down there leading the series 3-0, looking for a sweep. We were damn confident. Our minds thought we were going to win, but we just got beat, and good. It cost us a 20-win season.
I asked for memories of Coach Jarvis.
JONES: Kicking my ass one-on-one.
JARVIS: When I was a freshman, Jimmy would meet me as I came up from downstairs at Gill and stand near a side basket with a basketball, working with me playing defense. He’d take the ball with his left hand and he’d step at me, and I’d drop step and slide back up. He’d step at me and I’d drop step. I’d bring the drop-step foot back up, and he’s got a lay-in. Every fricking day.
SOIKE: We need to talk about Coach Jarvis creating a firestorm in Portland when we played the Pilots Frosh. The game starts and this guy who is checking Ron starts swearing at him. He beats up Ron a couple of times in the first half, and I’m going up for a rebound and he elbows me in the face and I get a bloody nose, but I don’t do anything because I’m a pleasant guy. A couple of plays later, he elbows me in the eye and I end up with a semi-black eye. He continues to swear and I can’t believe they’re not calling technicals on him for profanity. And I’m a Catholic boy.
He steals the ball from somebody and is going down to the other end. There’s no way I’m going to catch him, but I give chase and as he starts to go up I give him a little shove. It wasn’t violent at all. He plows into the grandstand behind the rim and does not get up. The crowd is over the top of us. I can’t remember if they called a foul on me. He went down like a ton of bricks.
HENJUM: The reason you couldn’t catch him was, you were slow and he was half-crippled, with a knee brace on. You didn’t give him a little push; you took his legs out from under him.
JARVIS: I’m on the bench, and here’s the guy’s old man, 6-5 and 280, screaming over the top of me.
SOIKE: He’s yelling, “Is that the way you teach your players to play?” And Jarvis looks at me and says, “Now see what you’ve made me do?” And he got up and went after the guy.
This is the only college gym (Howard Hall) in the country that has one shower for both teams to use. So I wait for Steve and Patrick to shower, and I weasel in with them and stay out of the way of players from the other team, because I figure there could be some sort of altercation. But (the Pilot players) see me and say, “That couldn’t have happened to a better guy.”
In a game midway through the season, the Rooks blow out Southwest Oregon Community College 113-69 in Coos Bay, setting a freshman team single-game scoring record.
OXSEN: We’re getting dressed before the game in Coos Bay and we realize there are no coaches. It was like, “Where are the coaches?” (Assistant trainer) Loren Solum is taping our ankles, and finally he goes, “Well fellas, you guys think you’re pretty good, but the coaches don’t think you’re as good as you guys think. They’re all out recruiting players they think are better than you are.” (Guffaws).
QUIGG: Coach Anderson is out recruiting. Coach Leach is out recruiting. Coach Jarvis is out recruiting. Solum says, “The Gazette-Times may have your talents a little higher than you guys think they are. You better kick their ass tonight.”
OXSEN: Loren served as our coach that night. Did he ever say anything during a timeout?
JONES: He said, “Get the Steves (Ericksen and Soike) the ball.”
OXSEN: We set the scoring record. Whatever Loren said must have worked.
QUIGG: When we played AAU teams like Claudia’s or the Medical/Dental school, Leach would launch into his old-timers speech with that Midwestern drawl. “The boys we are playing tonight, they’re old-timers, and I know what that’s like. They used to be able to do a lot of things, but now things hurt more. The problem is, if you let them in the game, you’re not going to get them out of the game. They’ll forget how slow and tired they are and how much it hurts. You’ll be in for the game of your life.” In later years, I could relate. I spent a lot more time as an old-timer than I did as a member of the Rooks.
OXSEN: Coach Leach also said, “These guys are going to be motivated. They haven’t had their names in the paper for a while.” (Laughs all around.)
QUIGG: Late in the season, the Washington state high school tournament was coming up. I asked Coach Leach, “You going to go up to scout for recruits?” He said, “Quigg, don’t you think we have already enough slow white guys from Washington?” We had Jeff Haller, Rick Reed, me and Tom Phipps whose knee was bad. He was right.
The five starters played a heavy load of minutes, and Quigg got ample time off the bench during the season. The rest of the players mostly sat.
QUIGG: Oxsen and Ericksen were such huge targets for the officials, they were in foul trouble in two minutes. That opened the door for some playing time for you. I got to play a lot.
FERREE: The first week or two of practice I sprained my ankle. I was just trying to catch up when I got back. It gets to the point where you just do your best when you get in. I loved the Linfield game. Got to the foul line and was 6 for 6.
OXSEN: One thing I remember Dean for is the mothballed LAPD police car his dad bought him. Most of us didn’t have a car. His was the mobile we used to drive to different places to take us around town. He had an eight-track tape player, with “Three Dog Night, Live at the Forum” stuck in the tape player. You couldn’t take that out. It played over and over on a trip we made to Newport. But Dean was always nice and encouraging for us to be able to use the car. We weren’t complaining.
HENJUM: I met Carl playing in the Men’s Gym and we heard there was going to be an open tryout. I remember how crowded it was that first day on the floor. I just loved the opportunity. I walked into Gill for the first time as a young kid competing in the state free throw contest. I’m from Silverton. We don’t have a Coliseum there. If you aren’t careful, you run into a wall shooting a lay-in. I thought Gill was fantastic. I just wanted to be on the team. I get to hang out with these guys and play in this gym.
Runyon won the fifth starting job.
RUNYON: Coach Leach told me right before the first game that I’d be starting. I was sitting in that tiny locker room next to the little tiny weight room tying my shoes. He came up right behind me, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You’re going to start.” My mouth got really dry. I started packing in the gum.
SOIKE: When Carl took a shot, there were many of us who would move into a spot for a rebound and see the ball go through the basket nothing but net. If we had the 3-point shot back in those days, that would have been prolific with Carl.
QUIGG: On the stat sheet, it lists the offensive rebounds Carl got. The number is zero.
RUNYON: Why waste my time?
QUIGG: Do you think you ever took a shot inside what would have been the 3-point line?
RUNYON: Not many.
JARVIS: After that year, I took the job at Spokane Falls CC. I took Carl with me. I tried to take Henjum with me, too, but he was a better student than Carl was. So he stayed here and studied.
RUNYON: When I got back to school after spring break my freshman year I’m in Hawley Hall. There is one phone on each floor. I haven’t been in my room for an hour and some guy stops by my room and says, “Someone on the phone for you.” It’s Ann Harper: “Coach Miller would like to talk to you.” I go down to Gill. I’d already gotten my transcript. My GPA after the second term was 1.06. I never went to class. I just wanted to play basketball and have fun. Ralph is sitting at his desk and Dave and Jimmy are standing behind him. He slides a paper across, and it’s my transcript. “Is this yours?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “What did you do?” I said, “I didn’t do anything.” He said, “We’re going to send you up to Spokane Falls and have Jarvis work with you.” That turned out great. He knew so much — things I would have never thought of. He taught me how to make a pass into the post. And I was able to get my grades up.
Another story, this one a few years later when Runyon was a senior.
RUNYON: We’re in practice at Gill before an Oregon game. With Dick Harter coaching, the Ducks were into taking charges. Lonnie Shelton gets the ball and starts heading down the court going 100 miles an hour. I’m the only guy back. I see Lonnie coming and at the last minute, it’s like, “Ole!” I get out of the way. Out of the darkness, you see the red-lit end of a cigarette. Ralph yells, “Take the charge!” I respond, “You take the charge!”
OXSEN: Everybody cracked up.
The walk-on players on the 1970-71 Rooks should be thankful that Quigg lobbied for a $5 per diem — and got it.
QUIGG: Oregon State was so cheap. Jim Barratt was our athletic director. My brother was at Washington, and on game nights they gave every player $20 for a meal. That included the walk-ons. Pretty good. With the Rooks, only the four guys on scholarship got $5. The walk-ons got zero. I talked to Leach and told him we wanted $5. too. He said, “We have talked to the AD about it and he said no.” I said, “OK if I go talk to him?”
I put on my local 42 hat and unbuttoned my shirt and pounded on his desk: “Mr. Barratt, it’s about game expenses. What do you think about paying just the scholarship guys? The walk-ons have to have dinner, too.” And after a little discussion he said, “OK, we’ll do it.” It cost them $30 a game — $5 apiece for six guys. The great conclusion was, after the last Husky game, we went down to the Town House where the Huskies were staying and they bought all the beer.
BERKEY: That year, Oregon State’s basketball attendance was its highest ever — an average of 8,760 a night. And Steve Ericksen scored 530 points, just short of Mel Counts freshman record.
SOIKE: A lot of those were assists from me. (Laughs all around.) He had great footwork and a great touch. When we discovered we could throw the ball up and he’d put it in, it made a lot of difference in our games.
ERICKSEN: I felt pretty confident. It was a fun year. I liked Leach. Ralph was a little different. He was tough.
BERKEY: We played Linfield that year. The rules were different in the NAIA. You could dunk. So Steve went up and he just crammed the ball — right into the back of the rim. It bounced out to midcourt.
QUIGG: And after he missed it, Steve ran into Ox, and they both dropped like two fallen fir trees to the floor.
OXSEN: I was just trying to take a charge.
SOIKE: Doug had a stalker that season — a woman who would come to just about every practice. She was known as the “Cookie Woman.” She brought chocolate chip cookies to several of the practices. We’d watch for her, and we probably ate most of the cookies. They were pretty good, and we couldn’t let him eat all of them.
OXSEN: True story. A girl would wait for me after practice or games. She had cookies. It got bad. She was stalking, and I had no interest. I had some of the guys go up the stairs to see if she’s up there, and I’d try to leave through another way. It just finally ended. I think she tired of making cookies.
Talk turns to Berkey the team manager.
OXSEN: Harvey took care of everything, including bed check.
RUNYON: That’s where he shined.
JARVIS: Did you get tipped for not squealing?
OXSEN: Today we watch the Beavers practice and there are like five managers, getting water and towels, wiping things down, chasing down balls. Harvey did it all. (Applause)
BERKEY: At first, the coaches handled bed check. We were on a road trip to the Bay Area, and the first night, Lonnie and George Tucker went out and partied with (Cal’s) Rickie Hawthorne. Who knows what time they got back, but unfortunately, they got back at the same time Ralph was coming in with some boosters. They were caught. The next night against Stanford, Ralph said, “You two guys aren’t playing.” That was the last time the coaches took bed check. They came to me and said, “From now on, you’re taking bed check.”
I told everybody, “You get caught coming in, let me know, so when the coaches ask me I can have the information ready.” They said I had to check; they didn’t say I had to report. I never reported anybody.
Later that season we go down to Reno. After the game, all the guys had plans. Some headed for some ranch (guffaws). When it was time for bed check, I go around and find one guy in his room — Carl Runyon.
RUNYON: I’d gotten to play. I was exhausted.
BERKEY: There’s a knock on my door. One of the coaches said, “Ralph wants to see you.” I went down to his room. He asked, “Did you take bed check?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “How many guys in their rooms?” I said, “One.” He said, “It’s a good thing you said that.” He knew the score.
We get back to Corvallis, and just before our bus is pulling into Gill, Ralph stands up and says, “Take a few minutes, say hello to your loved ones, then suit up. We’re going to have practice.”
RUNYON: It was 45 minutes of defensive positioning.
On the road, Harvey roomed with legendary trainer Bill “Ropesole” Robertson.
BERKEY: His wife would apologize to me before we left for a trip. If Ropes had been drinking beer, you could hardly get to sleep he was snoring so bad. If he had been drinking wine, it would take you two or three hours to get to sleep. If he had been drinking hard stuff, there was no sleep.
JARVIS: How many times would he show up in the training room and he had that wet suit on? He’d been in the sauna sweating it out.
BERKEY: Once a bunch of boosters rented a big house at the Oregon Coast. Ropes and his wife were in a bedroom in one end of the house, and Dee Andros and his wife were on the other end. Nobody in the house slept that night, those guys snored so loudly.
QUIGG: We go up to the Men’s Gym to practice after Christmas break — Gill was being used for registration. Harvey is there and he has this look on his face. I said, “Harvey, where are the basketballs?” He said, “Don’t blame me. Coach Miller told me we won’t need any basketballs today for practice.”
He’d gotten our grades for fall term. He said, “Let’s seen how our student-athletes did. Steve Soike, 1.2 Patrick Quigg, 1.9.” And on and on. Ox probably sucked it up for a 2.8. Leach just ran our ass for that day and the next practice.
SOIKE: Jarvis comes up to me at one of the first practices and says, “Steve, when you’re shooting, you bring the ball up like this.” And he showed me the technique I should be using. Next few weeks, I would practice for hours on end. We’re at Oregon. We’re beating them pretty handily in the first half. There’s a timeout and I get one of the nicest compliments I’ve had in basketball from Mr. Ericksen: “Keep shooting like that!” I guess Jim taught me right.
A few games later, we were playing at home and it was kind of tight. I threw a pass to Steve that was way up beyond the rim, and he rose up and got the ball and laid it in. He said, “Keep doing that!” I was always pass first, shoot second. (A lot of guffaws.)
QUIGG: Ralph became a legendary slow-down coach, but when he came to Oregon State it was with a reputation to run-and-gun. I remember a varsity game where they lost to Cal 101-100 in overtime, but when the game ended the fans gave them a standing ovation. They didn’t care that they lost. They were so damn happy that they scored 100 points.
SOIKE: Early that season, as we started practice, Carl’s hair was way too long. Leach said to the group, “If you guys don’t get your haircut, you won’t be playing.” Ralph was close by. Dave was staring at me, though he was talking to Carl.
RUNYON: I had a buzz cut.
SOIKE: I went to a female hair salon after practice and said to the lady there, “I need to get a haircut that makes it look like it’s really short, but it really isn’t. She said, “OK, we can take care of that.” She cut it a little bit and laid on Lady Clairol. The next day, we huddled up and the coach looked, and … all he did was give me a look. I think I got another haircut the second or third day.
QUIGG: I need a fact check on this. Right after we started practice in October, we played the varsity. We didn’t know what we were doing but we had some talented players, and they were having the transition from Paul Valenti to Ralph and they were a little out of sync. I don’t think there was a score kept, but they got their ass chewed, and we felt pretty confident about that. The next time we played the varsity, they just destroyed us.
The star on the varsity was junior guard Freddie Boyd, who would be the fifth pick in the 1972 NBA draft.
HENJUM: I played on the practice team against him a lot. Freddie was so good. So fast.
RUNYON: He could be going 150 miles per hour dribbling the ball, and then just go straight up with the jumper and you’re still going back.
JARVIS: Gary Payton was the same way, only Gary could go just as fast as Freddie in any direction — forward, backward, left or right, with or without the ball. He’d run away from anybody. And Freddie was just as fast. He’d grab me before practice and go, “Come on, let’s go one-on-one.” No. He was too fast.
JONES: We played a couple of times after his senior season. He wanted to get ready for (NBA training) camp, so we played some one-on-one. He said, “I’m not going to shoot any layups; I’m just going to shoot jump shots. I need you to try to stop me.” I couldn’t. Two or three dribbles, and he’d be up, and I couldn’t react in time.
QUIGG: Do you remember when they used to measure our jump reach? Guys like me who couldn’t jump, we’d go “bam!” with our hand against the wall. Freddie had something like a 39-inch jump reach. Billy Nickleberry was like 40. Freddie went up so high and gracefully and just barely touched the chalk. About two feet below were the hand prints from guys like me.
HENJUM: When I got to OSU I was still 17 — late birthday. Billy must have felt sorry for me. He said, “Henjum, I want to take you to town. We’ll go get a drink. “I said, “Billy, I can’t get into a bar. I’m only 17.” He said, “Don’t worry about it.” I got in his car and we walked in and everybody knew him. I’d never been in a bar. He orders me a drink and we had a drink. He was like 26. (Actually 22).
QUIGG: One of the reasons Oregon State basketball was successful in those years was (basketball office secretary) Ann Harper. She was everybody’s mother, only better than everybody’s mother. I told my mother, “Mom, I love you, but you gotta meet Ann Harper. She’s really something.” She was just the best.
After the season, she called me on the fourth floor at McNary Hall and said, “Coach Miller would like to speak to you.” I said, “Mrs. Harper, tell him thanks for letting me play freshman ball. I have no intent to play varsity anymore.” She said, “Patrick, Coach Miller told me to call you to come meet with him.” I said, “OK, Mrs. Harper.” I go down there. Ralph would call me “the Washington flash.” It was misreported that I was somewhat slow of foot. That day he told me, “Quigg, you have no goddamn business playing college basketball. I don’t know what you were thinking about.” You’d think a coach would say in that situation, “Thanks for your time on the Rook team. There are plenty of opportunities in other college activities for you.” But once the season ended, there was no one for him to holler at. He needed to holler at somebody. Subsequently in later years, Ralph was 100 percent gentleman with me every time. And I took his advice I didn’t play varsity basketball.
SOIKE: From 1983-92, Patrick and his family hosted a post-college basketball tournament at his house in Hoquiam, effectively called “the Brick Brothers Tournament.”
QUIGG: We played two-on-two and we seeded the teams. A guy who played one year was a friend and high school teammate. He wasn’t a very good player but he thought he was pretty good. He was real aggressive with a hot temper. He enters the tournament and thinks it’s a random draw. He comes up to me and says, ‘I got Oxsen.’ Ox was the No. 1 seed in the tournament. Then the guy starts watching the games, and he says to me, “You SOB. You think I’m the worst player here.”
SOIKE: We got to the semifinals and there was that F-ing John Quigg. And the score is tied and I have the ball out high and Patrick yells from the stands to his brother, ‘Guard him to his left. He wouldn’t be able to eat food if he went right.’ I spun and made a layup with my right hand, which was the highlight of my adult basketball life.
It seems to me, I suggest, that the 1970-71 Rooks team players are close more than a half-century later. Were they tight back then?
RUNYON: Playing on that Rook team was awesome. A great group of guys. It was just a fun year.
SOIKE: Sometimes we hated each other. But there was a lot of love involved.
JARVIS: Part of what’s happened in collegiate athletics is that the freshman team is gone. With your freshman team, many of the players didn’t go on to the varsity, but it gave that group of kids a bonding experience they don’t get now.
Today, the freshmen get thrust into the pressure of performing right away. And some of them don’t recover from that. They don’t have the bonding that you guys did, whether you went on or didn’t. With your group, a good portion of you did not expect to go to the next level. Now, all the freshmen expect to. They don’t gather the esprit de corps that is naturally built in with a Rook class like yours.
OXSEN: I one-hundred percent agree with that. The freshman team has a huge value. Take our four scholarship guys. Everybody was a real good player in high school. In today’s world, you get a scholarship offer and you come to school and think, “I should be able to play at the next level like I always have.” In our world (as freshmen), we didn’t have to worry about that. We weren’t trying to beat out varsity players, who were a little bigger, a little smarter, a little stronger, a little more experienced than we were. We had our own team, and we got a chance to develop and adjust to going to college, get used to the school, know the coaches and learn the system — so when you’re a sophomore you’re not starting from scratch.
JONES: As 18-year-olds, it was hard to compete against 22-year-olds. Our group had a lot in common. Everybody was friends, and it stayed that way. Runyon was in my wedding. Today, we’re a group of guys who have stayed friends because it was so much fun playing together that year. The best thing is, all of us are still alive.
QUIGG: Even if you don’t have success in college athletics, you’ll make life-long friends. That’s what happened to us at Oregon State so many years ago. It was only six months together, but we’re still connected. We’ve gotten together a few times over the years and we keep in touch. That’s pretty neat.
SOIKE: Very true. It was a blessing that we were all playing together at Oregon State at the same time. There was a lot of camaraderie. Still is. Some of these guys here tonight, I haven’t seen in 25 years. But the moment we get together, it’s a very pleasant feeling.
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Postscript: Quigg was unable to reach five other walk-ons who played games for the Rooks in 1970-71; Ken Barnhart, Larry Blitz, Rob Moore, Bruce Westfall and Clark Owens. Jim Mott, an outstanding defensive end who was co-captain of the Beavers football varsity in 1973, played four games with the Rooks that season. He died of leukemia in February at age 71.
A couple of 1970-71 Rooks have given back to their alma mater in a big way. Runyon and Quigg are both major donors to OSU men’s basketball. Their names are on the wall near the entrance to the basketball practice facility.
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