Greyhound season sparked a desire to play

It was a simpler time.

I didn’t know I was going to quit growing at 5-foot, 6 inches.

And I was pretty sure I would play basketball for the Eastern New Mexico University Greyhounds.

The time was late 1968 into early 1969. I hadn’t yet celebrated my 10th birthday and I still lived out in the country west of Portales. After I got off the school bus each day my little brother and I played basketball on the driveway out front until time to feed. Then back to the driveway in the dark until we were called in to supper.

The basketball goal was nailed to a squatty peach tree and had a really bad, under-sized wooden backboard with just remnants of a net if it even had one at all.

The driveway we used as our court wasn’t paved, but it was amazingly smooth because it was caliche fines that packed hard as rock. You did slide a good bit on the surface when you put your best moves on, but we got used to it.

At night I listened to the Greyhound games on my transistor radio, broadcast live on KENM-AM radio. I don’t remember the play-by-play man but I knew all the Hound cagers by name and could do a great running play-by-play while playing on the driveway.

We took turns being Greg Hyder, Larry Vanzant, Jim Guymon or Jerry Hyder. Those guys and their teammates were our heroes that year and for a few afterward. They were bigger than pro athletes in our eyes.

In fact, that basketball squad lifted the whole town of Portales and the surrounding region in early 1969. They were humble, full of hustle and never quit competing.

People either can’t grasp it or don’t believe me when I talk about how packed home games in the new Greyhound Arena were in that era. It was a crazy atmosphere and lots of fun for a 9-year-old and his schoolmates.

We were all members of the new Kennel Club and we had our own section up in the upper deck. It probably cost us $10 to join and we got an official membership card, a Kennel Club t-shirt in team colors, some concession stand goodies and best of all we got to go to a basketball clinic put on by our heroes on the fabulous floors of the arena or one of the other gyms in the PE Complex.

The Hounds kept moving forward in NAIA post-season play that year until they found themselves in the championship game in Kansas City. I remember that every game of that tournament could be heard on radios all over Portales. We had it on in classrooms at school, you heard the games in businesses and on everyone’s car radio.

The Greyhounds’ success sparked my first desire to play organized athletics. I soon moved to town and the opportunities to play were greatly expanded for me. I never was that great, especially at basketball, but playing with friends after school and on weekends are still my fondest memories of childhood.

I just wish I had kept my Kennel Club ID and shirt.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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