An Enduring Transition

In 1946, when Bob Hunskor played his first game of basketball for his hometown Newburg, ND Eagles, World War II had just ended. He went on to play as a collegian at first nearby Bottineau Community College and then at Minot State Teacher’s College. After graduating with a teaching degree, followed by a two-year stint in the military, at 24 years of age he returned to his Canadian-border hometown to help his father farm and to coach the Eagles on the hardwood. Teaching math was a required part of the gig. He stayed for 35 years. He also for the first eight years coached the girls’ basketball team, as well. The school’s enrollment never topped 40 students. Most years the male enrollment hovered around 20.

He is considered a living community treasure. More than just his sheer breadth of experience, first as a record setting high school basketball coach and then as a four-term elected state representative, it’s how Bob Hunskor has earned his exalted community status for so many years that stands out. From surviving the Great Depression and Dust Bowl eras to driving a Model A Ford, hearing the radio reports of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and serving in the military during the Cold War years, Hunskor’s life is full of tales both in an out of high school gymnasiums.

Seventy-five years after first donning the red and blue uniform of a program he would forge in his own relentless ways, Hunskor, now 94, holds a place of honor in the only hometown he has ever known. Even closing in on the century mark in age, he is no relic placed on a community shelf and rolled out only for special occasions. He squeezes in an interview between a game of pinochle at the town senior citizen center and a date in a deer hunting stand. Hunskor deflects any concern for the afternoon’s frigid temperatures with the assurance that the structure is propane heated. He is spry, mentally engaged and ready to share his thoughts on subjects ranging from modern coaches who overcoach to the red wave of 2016, that ended his 16-year tenure as the area’s representative in the North Dakota State House of Representative. He was 86 when he vacated the Bismarck state house and returned to his farmhouse home, five miles from the timeless high school gym named in his honor. The longevity of his community activism is noteworthy, for sure.

“I taught for one more year after I stopped coaching, and it was hard. I missed it but I still went to the games. I will just say it was hard,” he shares with a resigned shake of his head. It was the only time during our nearly one hour talk he dropped his cloak of stoicism.

Doing anything well for over ¾ of a century requires evolution. It requires a willingness to learn, a willingness to adapt and most importantly, it requires being involved for the right reasons. Throughout his career, first as a coach and teacher and then as a politician, Hunskor, year after year, checked all those boxes.

For his entire coaching career, the Newburg Eagles were one of the smallest enrollment schools in the state. With only two enrollment classifications in North Dakota, when the post-season began, Newburg faced opponents with enrollments up to 300 students. “We never had the depth,” Hunskor shares with me on a snowy November afternoon. “We wore down and if we had any foul trouble or injuries, our problem became even worse. We made the Class B sectional finals six times, one game short of the state tournament and then we would get beat. That was for the first 30 years of my career,” says the coach who compiled an overall off the charts record of 700 wins and 160 loses. “Finally, in1984, we broke through. We took second in the state in 1984 and 1985. We won the championship in 1986 and got second in 1989. Our 1986 state championship team had Noth Dakota’s Mr. Basketball, Chris Lamoureux, and we also had a 6’8 boy come through here then and that helped. In 1990 I had a health scare when I developed A-fib, an irregular heartbeat. The doctor, said, ‘you are done coaching.’”

For most of the 21^st century the Newburg schools have co-opped their basketball team with their once hated rival, the Westhope Sioux. “In the day, we were fierce rivals,” the old coach says with no attempt to hide the competitive fire still in his eyes. “We really went after each other. These little towns up here needed basketball. It is what made the community proud. I always knew how important basketball was to this town.”

The prairie of North Dakota is littered with dying towns who have lost their schools to consolidation, cannibalized by a bigger neighboring town. On my yearly visits to the High Plains I drive through many such dying hamlets.  It is sad. I can identify the building that once was the community school. I speculate that the section of the “schoolhouse” that is two stories tall was the gymnasium. I imagine years of basketball games played on frigid January Friday nights when two small prairie towns packed it to the rafters, necessitating the opening of the windows, just to cool the place down. From the banker to the town drunk, everyone was here to witness the drama and the heroics of the local team, a respite for one night a week to the drudgery of life in a lonely prairie town. And I wonder what happened to the trophies, earned by sweat and blood and once displayed with such pride, won on those long-ago cold winter nights? Hunskor saw that no such calamity would ever hit his town. The 1986 state championship trophy is today proudly displayed in the gymnasium hallway trophy case.

Hunskor stressed that he never over-coached, a mistake he feels many modern coaches make. He kept the offense basic, and the Eagles executed it how he wanted them to, often slowing it down effectively when the Eagles didn’t have a lot of shooters. “We had plays, but the plays were just common sense on how to play basketball,” Hunskor said. He stressed the basics and repetition by running through them over and over again. “I wanted my players to think, to figure out things in a game for themselves. I did my work in practice, I wanted the games to be about the players, turn them loose and just let them play.”

In 1992 Hunskor and his family moved to Barstow, CA. “Our two daughters were accomplished violin players. My wife was a talented musician. My two sons played basketball and my two daughters were skilled (violinists). During their summers in high school, they attended Julliard School in New York. They were very good. Both went to school on music scholarships at UCLA. My son was teaching outside of Los Angeles in Barstow. So, we moved to California. I interviewed for only one job. The principal cut me off immediately and said, ‘I see you taught in North Dakota. You are hired.’ Nothing was said about basketball. I don’t know if they even checked my resume. In North Dakota, if you are a teacher, you are a good one. I am proud of being a teacher from North Dakota.”

“In 2000,” Hunskor says, “my wife contracted ALS (Lou Gehrig Disease). We moved to Reno, NV to get her treatment, but of course there is no cure for ALS. She died the next year.” Those who know him will testify to his toughness. “I survived but I needed to reconnect. I was approached about running for the state house.” It wasn't, he says today, the easiest decision to make. But he was restless, rudderless and bored. “At first, I thought the idea was crazy. But why not? I needed something to do with my time. Somehow, I got elected and then re-elected for 16 years. Then the Red Wave (Trumpism) hit in 2016 and Democrats in North Dakota were not electable, anymore,” he says with a no hint of bitterness shrug of his shoulders.

A trademark to how Hunskor lives his life is his openness to always improving and growing. He stresses basketball is a microcosm of life itself. He knows that that motto applies to him, too. “At our first state tournament game in ’84, after having worked so hard for so many years to get there, we came out tight. We threw the ball away. One of our players in the first minute of the game trips over his own feet. We were scared to death. We were down 13-4. I called timeout and before I could say a word, one of our better players, Steve Hall, came straight off the floor to me and said, ‘Coach, don’t say a word. We know we are playing poorly. Just give us a minute. We will settle down.’ So, for a minute I just stared at them and they stared at me. A very strange timeout. But Steve was right. The best thing to say was to say nothing and that told them I had confidence in them more than any words could. We settled down, came back and won the game, the next (semifinal) and took second. I learned a lot that day and I had been coaching for a long time. You are never too old to learn.”

Over the last 75 years coaching has changed. Basketball has changed. Politics has changed. The world has changed. Hunskor’s core life beliefs have not. “There was a time when these little gyms were packed to the rafters,” he reminisces. “The rivalries were intense. Anytime we played Westhope, well watch out, it was always a fight. But then we would all go to the cafeteria and eat pie together. I never considered leaving. Why would I? Here I felt here the kids listened to me.” It was the quintessential mentor rising to the surface in Hunskor: seeking the simple joy of the more subtle rewards of working with boys who were at an age when a coach is most likely to make a difference.