9/22/2005:
Today is the birthday of one of the winningest college basketball coaches in history. Robert Luther Olson was born on this date in 1934 on his family’s farm near Hatton, and like so many who’ve achieved greatness, he overcame great adversity in his childhood.
Lute (as he is called) remembers his father, Albert, giving his children haircuts one Sunday morning before church. And then, just a bit later, having his father collapse and die of a massive stroke. Lute was just shy of his 5th birthday. Albert was only 47. Lute’s mother, Alinda, said Albert was “different” when he came back from WWI, and his family believed he was exposed to poison gas while working in a military construction battalion.
Lute had a much older brother, Amos, who came home from Mayville State College to take over the family farm. But, nine months later, he too died, from a tractor accident. Alinda was overwhelmed, and with nobody to run the farm, she sold it and moved to Mayville.
Alinda was a Norwegian immigrant, strong and athletic – said to be a great softball player. But she had only an eighth-grade education and no job training, so to support her family, she cleaned hotel rooms and waited tables at a Mayville café. Lute would go the café in the mornings and help with chores – for which he earned breakfast before heading for school.
Olson’s schoolmates remember him as upbeat and friendly with a good sense of humor. As with many kids in smaller towns, he was involved in everything there was – band, choir, church, and writing for the school newspaper.
But what really grabbed him was sports. As a junior, he was 6' 3", playing forward on the basketball team, but shooting like a guard. Former teammate, Bill Brady, later said, “He had really unbelievable range for shooting. I mean, three-point range. You’d find him [shooting] way, way out.”
Mayville coach, Harold Poier, sometimes took students to the Twin Cities to watch the Minneapolis Lakers or the U of M Gophers. He had high hopes for his team, but they were dashed when Alinda moved her family to Grand Forks to live with Lute’s daughter Kathleen. Lute said it was tough to finish out his senior year away from his friends, but moving from Class B to Class A basketball posed no problem for him.
It was the summer of 1951, and Lute joined the Grand Forks American Legion baseball team. Coach Fritz Engel recognized Olson’s talent and welcomed him onto his Central High football team in the fall and then onto the varsity basketball team.
Coach Engel was young, fresh from his own bit of stardom playing for UND. Sizing up his team that year, he decided he could run a more complex game than normal. “It was an awfully smart team,” he later said. “You could tell those guys something and they’d do it.”
Lute had already decided he wanted to be a coach someday. Now, with Engel as his mentor, he thrived, learning how to play a very deliberate game – how to quickly size up the opposition, come up with a plan and how to exude confidence – things he still uses to this day.
When the year was over, Grand Forks Central was Number One. But, the state championship wasn’t the only highlight of Olson’s senior year. He met Bobbi Russell, his future wife of 47 years.
Tune in tomorrow for part two of our story on Lute Olson, coach extraordinaire.
Source: Pascoe, Bruce. Arizona Daily Star. 20 Sept 2002.
Dakota Datebook written by Merry Helm