I have always been fascinated by small school basketball. In particular the small town basketball player who produces outsized results. In high school I would often dream of moving to some rural community where my size and ability would allow me to have more impact on the court (or maybe just a coach who wanted to let me shoot more). The three players listed below all got my attention as soon as I became aware of them. The earliest (but listed last here) was Peter Staackmann, who I saw play at the Toast of the Coast Tournament in 1997 when he was a sophomore at Port Aransas High School. Troy House I came across in college and Philip Malatare during a ride down a YouTube basketball rabbit hole. As is always the case, this is not a dispositive list of legendary small school hoopers, just a primer from which to start your own internet rabbit hole research. I had to sign up for a Newspapers.com account to find a lot of the information on House and Staackmann. There is no video I could find on House or Staackmann on YouTube (except for Staackmann’s videos that were apparently made for math class.
Troy House
I once met Troy when he was briefly and assistant coach at Schreiner University (where I graduated from in 2005). He as very quiet and unassuming, and not very big. I have never seen him shoot or dribble a basketball. You can’t find a video of him anywhere on YouTube. However, even before I got to college I knew him as the all-team leading scorer in Texas high school basketball history with 4,518 points over a four year career where he attended three schools. His career culminated in the 1990 state championship at Tom Moore High School in Ingram, TX where Troy averaged 40.5ppg. House also set records for assists and in the words of his coach at Jim Reid, “He was just a delight to coach.” He had enough notoriety as a high school senior that he appeared in Sports Illustrated FACES IN THE CROWD. He was inducted into the Texas High School Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006. House’s collegiate career was less stellar. He averaged 2.7ppg at UTSA before stints at Lubbock Christian, Hill County Junior College and Mary Hardin-Baylor. It also appears that House was very successful as a track athlete and was at the center of a controversy regarding a student handbook infraction that almost kept him out of his senior track season and resulted in House suing the school district.
Below is a clip from the January 25, 1995 edition of the Kerrville Daily Times referencing the reunion of House, with Jim Reid his high school coach when House’s UMHB played against Schreiner College, where Reid then served as an assistant.
Philip Malatare
A more recent player, is Philip Malatare. I became aware of him when I came across a short film documenting his high school success. Growing up playing what is known as “rez ball” (this a Vice Sports documentary about rez ball on a reservation in South Dakota) he successfully brought the fast paced high energy style game with him as he led Arlee High School in Montana to back to back Class C championships before going on to play at North Idaho College and then Eastern Oregon University, where he was named Cascade Conference Newcomer of the Year. While his basketball accomplishments are impressive Malatare and his then coach Zanen Pitts are more well known for creating the “Warrior Movement” an effort to combat suicide and mental health issues on Indian Reservations, particularly there own. They were featured in the New York Times and there is a book about their 2017-2018 season.
Historically speaking players from reservations have been unsuccessful in convincing college basketball coaches that they are serious recruits. Malatare and some of his teammates have bucked that trend in the Pacific Northwest.
Peter Staackmann
Most interesting to me, because I saw him play in person, is Peter Staackman. He led the Port Aransas Marlins to some very successful seasons (including about 2 seasons and change without losing a district match-up. As of 2017 (the most recent numbers I could find) he held the following scoring records in the State of Texas: #61 Single Season-937pts, #107 Highest Scoring Game-53pts, #24 Highest Scoring Career-2864pts. As of the same time frame he was the #5 Single Season Leader and the #2 Career Scoring Leader in the Coastal Bend area of Texas. He was First Team All-State in the 1A classification as a junior and Second Team All-State in the 2A classification as a senior. He was named USA Today Pre-Season All-American Honorable Mention before his senior season. He was also a solid rebounder, averaging more than 11rpg his senior season. I am probably leaving off a number of his accolades because the internet was not quite so omnipresent in 1999. Two things are fascinating, and certainly related, to me about Staackmann, the first being that we just didn’t have players like that at 1A and 2A schools in South Texas. All-State caliber players had played in the area, but not often. The second was his ability to play well against opponents from much larger schools. My recollection of him is a man before his time who had a 6’3” frame (which would qualify for a starting post-player role in many 4A and 5A area schools at the time) coupled with excellent post footwork and the ability to knock down a long range shot. If he ever returns my emails he can tell me if I remember his game correctly. He had a productive collegiate career at Concordia Lutheran and has spent time as a head and assistant coach in Texas high schools. It appears that he is currently an assistant at Georgetown High School.
The clip below is from the article where Staackmann is named the Player of the Year by the Corpus Christi Caller Times. (The women’s player in the photo is Sabrina Mitchell. She and I attended middle school together and she later played for Texas A&M)
