"Who's Loy Young?"
 
That's a question which has often been asked this winter when basketball fans see his name painted near the sidelines at both ends of the court in the new Chicoine Center at Chadron State College.
 
Young was the Eagles' highly successful basketball coach for five years during the 1950s. Young, who is celebrating his 92^nd birthday on Jan. 21, his wife, Jan, live in a care facility in Mankato, Minn. He was a C-47 cargo plane pilot in Asia two years during World War II. Both before and after the war, Young was a basketball standout at Mankato State. He taught and coached at the school after leaving Chadron State.
 
All five of Young's teams at CSC had winning records. They were 18-7 in 1951-52, 17-7 in 1952-53, 14-12 in 1953-54, 19-6 in 1954-55 and 16-5 in 1955-56. His 84-37 cumulative record gives him a .692 winning percentage, the best ever for a CSC men's basketball coach.
 
Young's first team at Chadron State won the NAIA District 11 (Nebraska) championship and represented the state at the National Tournament in Kansas City. Three of the remaining four teams also advanced to the district playoffs.
 
A majority of the players on Young's teams were from the region. They included Bob Armstrong, Danny Kuska, Larry Lytle, Charlie Muma and Jim Hampton, all graduates of Chadron Prep, the high school branch of Chadron State that was closed at the end of the 1960-61 school year.
 
Other players from western Nebraska included Quentin Hughes of Crawford, Bob Cook, Dale Hendrickson and Paul Klingman of Gering, Stan Martin and Bob and Carl Morris of Alliance, Jim Martin and Tom Shroud of Hyannis, Mac Rayfield of Mulllen, Larry Turner of Valentine and Don Hartwig of Scottsbluff.
 
Two other team members—Joe Lytle and Bob Kelly—were from Wall and Quinn, S.D., respectively. Larry Lytle, who is Joe's younger brother, encouraged them to join the Eagles.
 
Larry Lytle remembers the headline in the Chadron Record when Joe, who had out of school several years, arrived. It read, "New Big Man on Campus." Joe was 6-foot-3. He also recalls that Kelly, who at 6-5 was CSC's tallest player during that era, drew special attention because he was the 400^th student to enroll after transferring from South Dakota State.
 
Otto Welfring of Martin and Don Curtis of Edgemont were other South Dakotans on the team. Bill Sullenburger, a graduate of Torrington High School, played for Young three years after initially attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
 
 One of the top players during Young's tenure was Nels Christiansen of Red Lodge, Mont., who was a senior and played center on the national tournament team. He came to Chadron State after being coached in high school by Bill Bruer, a Crawford native who had been a three-sport standout at CSC in the 1940s prior to World War II.
 
When he graduated, Christiansen was the Eagles' all-time leading scorer with 1,375 points, averaging about 15 points a game during his career.
 
Christiansen's scoring record was broken two years later by Bud Larsen, a Springview native who finished his career with 1,605 points. It was 26 years before anyone surpassed that figure and it's still third on CSC's all-time list. Teammates say Larsen was almost unstoppable around the basket.
 
Larry Lytle, who scored 1,093 points during his career, feels fortunate that he got to play for Young all four years. Because of his appreciation for Young, Lytle spearheaded the fund drive that helped put his mentor's name on the floor.
 
"It was run, pass and shoot, most of the time," Lytle said. "We had very few plays other than a couple of out-of-bounds plays. We never had a dribbler (now called point guard). Hardly anyone dribbled more than twice before they passed or shot. We were always on the move and we were all looking for a shot. We scored more than 100 points quite a few times. And, the games were shorter then because they didn't stop the clock as much as they do now."
 
Lytle said Young never yelled at the players, calling him "quiet and methodical."
 
"He sure got a lot out of a bunch of country hicks," Lytle added.
 
While the Eagles "didn't win 'em all," under Young, they held large margins over most traditional rivals—Black Hills State, 9-0; Colorado Mines, 8-0; Midland Lutheran, 10-0; Kearney State, 9-2; Doane, 7-3; Wayne State, 7-3; South Dakota Tech, 12-6; and Peru State, 6-4.
 
Only Nebraska Wesleyan at 8-4 and Hastings College at 8-6 won more games from the Eagles than they lost to them during the five-year stretch.
 
Lytle added one more tidbit to his remembrances of Young:
 
"We all had to make 10 consecutive free throws before we could leave practice. There were nights when he had to stay pretty late until that last guy made 10 in a row. But he made good free throw shooters out of us by doing that."
 
Jerry, the oldest of the Youngs' seven children, hopes to bring his father to Chadron for the Eagles' final home dates on Feb. 13 and/or 14 so he can see the Eagles' new facility.