Kamiakin basketball getting the old gang back together

Recently Dave Harding got to looking at an old photo of himself and his brother Rick.

It was from the ‘70s.

They were wearing their old Kamiakin Braves jerseys. The photo was a gift to their father, Norm, for Father’s Day.

Dave got the picture back after Norm died years ago.

But that photo got Dave to reminiscing, and he went down a wormhole.

“I started going through old scrapbooks,” he said, and it got him to thinking about a basketball reunion. So he called his old coach, Randy Dolven.

“We decided to get some of the guys together,” said Harding.

Basketball reunions are nothing new. People who went to Richland and Pasco high schools have done them before.

But Kamiakin alums have never really had one.

“This is all Dave’s doing,” said Dolven, who lives in Kennewick but snowbirds in Arizona half the year. “He got on the phone and checked around. It started with the 1974 and 75 teams, and we added the 1976 team. Forty-five years after they’re done playing basketball, there really hasn’t been an alumni basketball group that has gotten together.”

And it grew.

Both Harding and Dolven decided to invite anyone who played basketball for Kamiakin in the 1970s to show up to the Jan. 10 Pasco at Kamiakin boys-girls basketball doubleheader.

“Let’s get everybody from the 1970s decade that played or was part of the program, have them come to the game, and have them all stand up in the stands,” said Dolven. “I think there’d be quite a few people there. We’ve got guys flying in from all around the country for this.”

Including Dolven.

Current Kamiakin athletic director Casey Gant is pretty excited by the gathering.

“It’s a great opportunity to recognize the programs that have really paved the way for our present-day Braves,” said Gant. “Any time that we can honor those that are at the foundation of your programs and show people that the phrase, ‘Once a Brave, always a Brave,’ means something, then that is a good thing.”

After the games, everyone is invited to Round Table Pizza on Clearwater Avenue.

“It used to be the old Chico’s Pizza Parlor,” said Harding, a ‘75 grad. “We’d all used to meet there after basketball games. Everyone. Our parents, the players, our friends and siblings.”

High school basketball was king

When many Tri-Citians think of high school basketball in the ‘70s, most remember Richland and Pasco’s programs.

Before the internet and cable TV blossomed, high school sports were popular entertainment events.

Getting into the Pasco at Richland boys basketball game at Art Dawald meant getting there before the junior varsity game began or you risked being locked out — or standing without a seat.

The same things could be said of a Richland at Kamiakin, or Pasco at Kamiakin game at the time.

Kamiakin had just opened as the second high school in Kennewick in the fall of 1970.

Dolven was the school’s first boys basketball coach, and when Kamiakin physically opened, the gym wasn’t quite finished and had a dirt floor.

“These kids were trailblazers,” Dolven said. “That first group of kids didn’t even have a gym floor when school started that year. So we had to go to Highlands Middle School.”

Quickly, things improved in the following years.

The 1973-74 squad was the first team to qualify for the state tournament.

And while it wouldn’t be until the 1984-85 season that a Kamiakin team would return to the state tournament again, the 1974-75 and 1975-76 Braves teams were also strong and had a fanatical following.

“Those were the three teams that were the heart and soul of Kamiakin basketball during that first decade,” said Dolven. “The 1974 team was the first one to play at state. Those teams from 1974, 75 and 76, they won a game from Richland each of those three seasons. The 1975 team didn’t get to state, but it broke a 52-game win streak at Dawald that Richland had that year. The 1976 team beat them at Kamiakin.”

As a young middle schooler at the time, I can attest to some of those games, beggin my parents to take me to the games.

There was nothing like watching Kamiakin’s Kevan Aman and Richland’s Mike Neill trade 35-foot left-handed set shots that swished in the days before anyone thought of creating a 3-point line.

Aman would later be drafted by the New York Mets.

Varsity head coach

Dolven was the first of just four men who have ever held the boys varsity head coaching job in the school’s 50-year existence. Former players think nothing of calling him up just to talk, or maybe playing a round of golf with him.

Full disclosure: I played for Dolven at the end of the 70’s. We had two good players, but the rest of us weren’t strong at basketball.

It might help explain why he quit after our senior season and decided being the school’s new athletic director would be an easier job.

That also explains why I started for two seasons. I had no offensive skills, but I could play some defense.

But one game, my senior year, I happened to score 20 points in a regular-season win against a Pasco team that would place second at state later that season, losing to eventual state champ Richland in the title game.

As I walked off the floor that night, feeling good about what I had done, Kamiakin assistant coach Don Pirozok sidled up to me and whispered in my ear.

“(Pasco coach) Dick King wants you to take a drug test,” he said.

I laughed, because I would have wanted me drug tested too.

Every former Kamiakin player has their own stories, and that’s why Harding and Dolven want to spend an evening hearing them, and telling them.

“It’s a camaraderie thing,” said Dolven.

“There are still some people we’re trying to get ahold of,” said Harding, who lives in Puyallup and has worked with people with developmental disabilities for the past 28 years. “I guess I was kind of reminiscing. But I’d love to meet every January. Let’s just meet at the game, watch the game, go have pizza, reminisce, and take photos.”

For more information, call Dave Harding at 360-941-8862.