FROM FARM TO FAME
FROM FARM TO FAME
THE
Waterloo Wonders
Rock Hill Middle School
History Fair
REPORT
By
Nathan Davenport
March 20, 2003
Imagine the Harlem Globetrotters. Now imagine them as five short white teenage farm boys. In the small Lawrence County, Ohio village of Waterloo, lived five white boys who would make up a basketball team that would sweep the nation by surprise with their crowd-pleasing moves. The starting five players were: Orlyn Roberts, 5’11 ½ “. Wyman Roberts 5’10”, Beryl Drummon, 5’8”, and Curtis McMahon, 5’11 ½ “, and Stewart Wiseman, 5’7”. The team was coached by Magellan Hairston. Waterloo, is located in Southern Ohio and at that time had a population of less than 150 people. Most of them were farmers. The community only had a post office, a couple of stores and restaurants, a bar, two doctors, and one funeral home.
In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s there wasn’t a lot to do in Waterloo besides farm, hunt and play basketball. According to Lee Drummond who was one of the reserves for Waterloo, you would play with a homemade ball. “Take an old sock, fill it full of rags, shirt sleeves, whatever you could tear up and put in there. Tie strings around it and that was your ball.” The Roberts boys learned to play by practicing in a loft of a barn, shooting a wadded ball of rags at a rusty iron ring. McMahon learned to shoot on an outdoor court where a missed short meant he would have to chase the ball down a 300-yard hill. During the summer months, after the guys had finished their chores, they would get together on a piece of land and shoot ball at a rim they had talked out of the town blacksmith. When they got tired of shooting, they would just pass the ball around. Behind their back, through the legs, or overhand like a baseball – it didn’t matter. The first Waterloo basketball team was made up of only females because there was only one boy among the school’s 17 students. That boy was Wiseman. His dad was the principal and during timeouts and halftime of the girl’s games, Wiseman would run out on the court and get as many shots in as he could before the game started again.
These five boys became known as the “Waterloo Wonders” by an Ironton reporter, Stan Morris. Throughout their entire career this name “stuck” and they would go down in history known as the “Waterloo Wonders”. Waterloo never lost a game at home from 1932 until 1943, whether they were playing a high school, college or YMCA team. The price of admission to a game was 10 cents for a student and 20 cents for an adult, bu those who couldn’t afford it were often allowed in free.
One of the keys to their success was their incredible passing skills. If at any time the ball would touch an opposing player’s hand, the only thing they could do would be to deflect if out of bounds. They made graceful set shots from mid-court; hook shots from the corners; bouncing free throws; passing the ball between the legs; dribbling out of the gym’s exits and a few moments later dribbling in another; stopping and handing the ball back to a defender and giving him the chance to shoot the ball. Some of their crowd pleasers included: sending two players at a time off the court to sit on the bench and eat popcorn while the other three played ball, and sending one of their players to mid-court to shoot marbles during the game. Said Harold Rolph, who officiated many of the Wonder’s home games, “It was so pleasant to watch them play that I would often tell them at the scorer’s desk….Don’t worry about the clock. Just let it run.”
In two remarkable seasons the Wonders played almost 100 games and won all but three games. Most of the games were on the road and were against much bigger schools. The team once won seven games in nine days and had a 56-game winning streak. Orlyn Roberts, scored 69 points in three games. In a 1935 game against Chesapeake, the Wonders were so far ahead at halftime that they left the subs to finish off the win and hurried on to Jackson for the second game of the night. They beat two teams in one evening ----Jackson 45-24 and Chesapeake 47-5. During a State Championship at the Fairgrounds Coliseum, they drew more the 9,000 fans. The fire doors had to be torn off their hinges to make room. The OHSAA allowed them to extend their season and play as many games as they wanted. Their share of the money was enough that they could stay in expensive hotels and eat at fine restaurants while they were on the road.
After graduation in 1935 Wiseman left Waterloo to attend Rio Grande College. The entire team was offered scholarships to the University of Kentucky but turned them down to “barnstorm” through the Midwest playing and beating the greatest professional teams including the New York Renns, the Harlem Globetrotters, and Philadelphia Sphas and the New York Celtics.
The coach of the team was Magellan Hairston. He was a principal of the high school at Waterloo who some say in his spare time, “molded the most famous schoolboy team in Ohio history.” Some of the big city press called the team the “hillbillies” from down south. Hairston decided he would have the best dressed team in the state tournament in Columbus and bought each player and Oxford gray traveling suit and a flashy new uniform cut from jockey satin. In a personal interview with Mick Hairston, the nephew of coach Hairston, I recently learned that part of the reason that they probably turned down the scholarships and decided to “barnstorm” was that they needed to support their families by sending money from their earnings. Mr. Hairston also expressed that they disliked school and probably wouldn’t have liked college anyway. His grandmother had a farm and would often have the boys stay with her to help her with the farm, take care of them and keep them out of trouble. Mick remembers a time when he was about 18 years old and he was in the Armory in Ironton. There was a bet that Orlin Roberts couldn’t make 10 out of 10 free throws. At about the age or 60, he took the ball, stood at the line and sank every shot.
Some historians consider the Waterloo Wonders the forerunners of the Harlem Globetrotters because of their passing and showmanship. In April 1996 the team and its coach, Magellan Hairston were inducted into the Ohio High School Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame. This was the first time that a team had been honored. “We felt they were an important part of Ohio basketball. There were one of a kind. They were the best team of their era and maybe all time,” said Don Henderson, Hall of Fame coordinator.
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