John's Journal: 107 Years Later, History Comes Back To Life In Waseca

It’s highly doubtful – in fact it’s an iron-clad certainty – that no members of Waseca High School’s first state championship boys basketball team are cheering for the undefeated 2024-25 Bluejays … unless they’re wearing blue and gold in the great beyond.

The school’s first state title came in 1918, which was 107 years ago. Waseca defeated Duluth Central 29-10 in the 1918 state championship game at Carleton College in Northfield, finishing with a season record of 13-0. That made Waseca the first team to be unbeaten; the first boys state basketball tournament was held in 1913, with Fosston outscoring Mountain Lake 29-27 in the finals.

This year marks Waseca’s 14^th trip to state, which they opened with a 49-45 over Pequot Lakes in Wednesday’s Class 2A quarterfinals at Target Center. The second-seeded Bluejays (31-0) are one of two unbeaten teams among all four classes at state; the other is 2A top-seeded Albany (29-0), which beat Pequot Lakes 80-57 Wednesday. Waseca will meet third-seeded Breck (20-10) in Friday’s semifinals at Williams Arena.

The 1918 Waseca team consisted of seven players: Lester Juhnke, Donald Frentz, Renel Jacobson, Clifford Wyman, Rollins Juhnke, Arthur Wobschall and Everett Johnson. We know this because their names were inscribed on a trophy – a lovely silver cup -- that commemorated their state title.

The coach in 1918 was G. Leigh McQueen. Waseca returned to state in 1919 under a new coach, Lloyd L. Stowell. The reasons for the coaching change, like a lot of details from more than a century ago, are a mystery.

Many facts about Waseca’s first state championship team have been lost to time, and another thing that was lost was the trophy. But after decades of mystery and rumors and speculation, the shiny hardware was found a few weeks ago. It’s quite a story.

John Hanson, a teacher at Waseca High School who leads a course on local history, was the sleuth who searched for and ultimately found the trophy. It’s a bit dented and it sits a little crooked but it’s back in the school. In 1963 a replacement was ordered; it’s a bronze basketball player standing atop a wooden base. So the Bluejays now have TWO championship trophies from 1918.

Hanson’s research and investigation uncovered how and where the trophy had been all these years.

“John did all the legwork behind it,” said Waseca activities director Joe Hedervare. “This has turned into a passion project for him.”

No one even know there was a missing trophy until 2019, when the Bluejays finished as state runner-up. As folks looked back on the team’s history, Hanson learned from the Waseca Historical Society that the trophy in the school’s collection was not the original.

The school in Waseca burned a few years after that 1918 tournament, and it was thought that the trophy, like everything else, had been destroyed.

People had died and records were lost, so Hanson didn’t have a lot to go on as he investigated. There were stories and rumors, including that a local barber had displayed the trophy in his shop at one time.

Searching for information, any little scrap of information, Hanson made phone calls to people who may have had family members involved with the team or the trophy back in the day.

“I called family member of one gentleman who had passed away,” Hanson said. “The name is Johnson, and there are thousands of Johnsons. I was doing a search on this gentleman for a different reason, from a prominent family in Waseca. I got to the bottom of a search result and there was a picture of a trophy. It said it was the state championship trophy. I went down to the basement of the Historical Society, and there it was, sitting in the basement of our own museum.”

“It had been in town the whole time,” Hedervare said. “All these innuendos of someone stealing it, a fire, and he just happened to find it at the Historical Society one day. He stumbled upon it.”

Further research revealed that at some point a custodian had found the original trophy somewhere in the school. But that’s about the only clue to where it traveled and how it returned.

“I don’t know how or why, but it has survived,” Hanson said. “Nobody knows where he found it in the school, but it was after the 1960s, so they wouldn’t have bought a replacement if the original had been found earlier. It’s classic local history. There are certainly some unanswered questions.”

Hedervare said of the 1918 trophy, “It looks like it’s gone on an adventure. It’s tilted forward a little bit, there’s a dent on the front of it. Our speculation is it may have been damaged in the fire. But how did it disappear all this time? And how did it wind up at the Historical Society? No one knows how it got there.”

The year 1918 was famous for other reasons, especially a worldwide influenza pandemic. The second boys basketball title for Waseca came 103 years later in 2021 during the Covid pandemic.

“The older you get, the more you appreciate history,” said current Bluejays coach Seth Anderson. And that was very much talked about when we won the state title in 2021.”

The two trophies – one from 1918 and one from 1963 – will be displayed next to each other in a school trophy case.

“We’re going to make sure to make a point that the kids know about this history,” said Hedervare. “We always talk about history in our community, how proud we are of our history as we try to pave the way for future generations of Blue Jays.”

After the Bluejays’ opening-round win in the 2025 state tournament, Anderson said, “Tradition is fun, history is fun, and these guys are a living part of it now.”

--MSHSL staff member John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Bluesky at johnmilleamn and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts. Contact John at [email protected] or [email protected]