A Man’s Quest to Honor the 1939 Rogers City Basketball Team

ROGERS CITY, MI – It has been a long time coming for the 1939 Rogers City basketball team…84 years to be exact. Fast forward to 2023, a man named Harold Newhouse made it his mission to honor the history of those undefeated Hurons basketball players.

Many years ago, Newhouse found himself admiring the Hurons’ trophy cases wasting time before his daughter’s basketball game. Among the trophies, Newhouse found a trophy from 1939 that simply said “regional basketball trophy,” and nothing else. Something was missing from the trophy…the names of the players who went undefeated for the first time in Hurons history.

The trophy had gone nameless for almost 85 years. Newhouse was determined to change that. He got ahold of the school’s superintendent that very next day asking for the trophy. “Nobody knew anything about it,” he said. “I did because my dad used to show me pictures of his team.”

Engraving the trophy became a very personal project for Newhouse. He grew up being shown pictures of the Hurons’ 1939 team because his father and uncle were both members of the historic program.

Working alongside the school’s athletic department, Newhouse received donations from local businesses to turn the trophy engravement into a reality. Athletic Director Karl Grambau, knew how special this was for Newhouse. “Harold did all of this on his own,” he said. “It’s really neat to look back at the history.”

Newhouse’s wish of recognizing the 1939 Hurons team finally came to fruition after the trophy went nameless for more than 80 years. “It’s all filled out now,” he said. “This is one of the biggest days of my life to give back to this school.”