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Historic Church League Offers Basketball With a Mission
OAK LAWN, IL (March, 2000) - The tradition has been in place nearly as long as the Evangelical Covenant Church itself, having spanned two world wars and the evolution of dozens of churches in the Chicagoland area.
With three leagues involving six churches, the Covenant Basketball League of Chicago recently started its 84th season with a series of games at Oak Lawn High School. Although the name has changed, the mission of the league has not. The league promotes Christian fellowship among players from a variety of church affiliations and provides an opportunity to acquaint nonbelievers with the gospel through friendship evangelism.
"We've gotten a lot of parental support - that is what has made it run smoothly," said league commissioner Tom Marinier.
The Mission Basketball League started in 1915 and included teams from Cuyler, Edgewater, Humboldt Park, Lake View, North Park and Ravenswood. According to an article written
by league president L.V. Okerberg, baseball and football leagues had failed to attract sufficient interest. With the assistance of Bob Bong and M.E. Friberg, the basketball league enjoyed early success, with Saturday night games at Senn High School drawing large crowds and providing quality competition.
From the start, the Mission Basketball League intended to be an avenue for winning souls. It also aimed to help other organizations, giving more than $13,000 to the Princeton Children's Home and aiding the Covenant Harbor Athletic Fund. Okerberg served as league president until 1921,
followed by Berger Hedberg and Bob Bong for two-year terms. Stalwart board members like Ralph Bong, Walter Hodgkinson, Gene Skooglund and Roy Odman (among others) have kept the league running smoothly.
North Park was the first champion of the North Side Mission Basketball League and received a trophy in the form of a shield. Lake View won the second men's title before World War I halted league activities until 1919, when the league restarted. By 1922, the league had grown enough
to have both North and South sections, with Austin of the South section dominating play with three straight titles.
After Ravenswood Covenant won four of the next five years, Grand Crossing became the dominant team, winning the first of five straight titles in 1930 and eventually taking nine of 12 before league play was interrupted by World War II. After the war, there were three divisions - North, South and West - and in 1949 a Chicago All-Star team traveled to Minneapolis to play a Twin City All-Star squad.
The Mission Basketball League continued to draw good players as Ravenswood's Vern Gustafson won four scoring titles in the 1950s and Bethany's Ed Stube on the south side was good enough to move from church league ball to Loyola University's basketball team in 1952. Others went even further in basketball. In the early 1960s, Glen Ellyn Covenant of the North section benefited from the play of former NBA player Mel Peterson (1961 league MVP) and
current San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Dick Helm (the 1962 MVP) in winning five straight championships.
Peterson, who played in the NBA with Baltimore, Oakland and the Los Angeles Lakers, was the 1961 scoring champ with 248 points, nearly doubling his section's runner-up. Later, Wally Filkin won four straight scoring titles and two MVP awards during Glen Ellyn's mini-dynasty. On the south side, Trinity's Clarence Rosengren was the player to watch, winning section MVP honors in 1957, 1961 and 1968 and taking the section scoring title in 1969.
While Ravenswood's Jeff Olsen was taking three straight scoring titles (1976-78) in the North section, Marinier of Beverly became the top men's league player on the south side during the 1970s - his individual success is unparalleled in the league's history. A two-time high school
league MVP, he tied for the section men's scoring title in 1973, then won it outright five straight seasons, averaging 20 points or more each time. He eventually won 11 scoring titles in a 14-year stretch and earned or shared MVP honors 13 times from 1971 to 1987.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, the North section was led by four-time MVP Jose Chao and Rich Pinskey of Cuyler, Roger Clausen of Winnetka, and Ravenswood's Tim Gustafson and John Kuehn. In the south section, Leonard Cooper and Dan Dodge of Salem/Christian Hills and
Beverly's Dwight Zivo became three of the top scorers alongside Marinier. Women began playing in the south side's junior league in 1978 and in 1991, the men's league's had its first female All-Star, Heather Rankin of Ravenswood.
The Mission Basketball League became so popular that a high school league was instituted in 1958, with a junior league formed in 1976. In 1971, Trinity's Bill Hackel scored 350 point in the high school league, the most points ever scored in any division. The most notable youth who has played recently is Oakdale Covenant's Kris Clemens, who led the South section's junior league in scoring in 1994. He is currently playing Division I basketball at Holy Cross.
This year's league has five teams in each of the junior, high school and men's divisions, with a variety of ethnic and church groups represented. Marinier, for one, sees the diversity as a positive change.
"It's good for the churches and it's good for the kids," Marinier said. "Maybe before, a Covenant kid wouldn't see other kids of other ethnic groups, but now they're all working together toward the same goal. And it's great for kids who didn't play high school ball to play in an exciting
atmosphere with a few hundred fans."
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