COLUMN: In the front row
As the Braham Bombers finished off an unbeaten season, won their second straight state Class AA championship and were legitimately touted as the state’s best team regardless of class, one couldn’t help but wonder how Ely’s high school boys basketball program would have fared if Nate and Kathy Dahlman had never left town.Two of the their six children - 6-7 junior Isaiah Dahlman and 6-6 sophomore Noah Dahlman - formed the heart of a Braham team that has won 55 straight games and has been touted in some circles as one of the best squads in state history.Put those two - Isaiah is already being pursued by the top Division I college programs in the country while Noah is a legitimate college prospect in his own right - with Ely’s 2,000-point scorer Tim Scott and what do you get?More than likely, a team that would have rolled past northeastern Minnesota competition and found itself playing at the Target Center and on statewide television last week.“I didn’t even want to think about it,” said Tom McDonald, Ely’s longtime head coach. “I think it makes coaching a lot easier. We would have two lefties out there with Isaiah and Timmy out there. I don’t know how you beat us with that team.”McDonald took in the state tournament and watched the Dahlman boys and Braham carve up the competition.The lanky Isaiah, who scored 33 points in the AA final, plays at the top of Braham’s full-court press and despite his size, serves as a point guard. Noah was the AA tournament’s best rebounder and shouldn’t take a backseat to any center in the state.“I don’t know how you stop Isaiah,” said McDonald. “And Noah is so solid underneath. Then if they were here to have someone like Tim as a second or third option, wow.”But seeing the Dahlmans in Ely red and white is left for the dreams of local basketball fans who remember their brief tenure in town.Nate Dahlman taught science and coached the boys basketball team at Ely from 1985-89 while Kathy, the daughter of Minnesota basketball legend and former Lakers coach John Kundla - was a physical education teacher and girls basketball coach here.School budget cuts cost Nate Dahlman his full-time job and the family left for Braham in the summer of ’89. That may have been Ely’s biggest roundball loss in two decades, and was certainly Braham’s biggest win.• Isaiah Dahlman has his pick of big-time Division I college programs and he’s reportedly narrowed his list down to six schools, including Minnesota and fellow Big Ten institutions Iowa and Michigan State.• Two officials with local ties were among those selected to work at the state boys basketball tournament.Paul McDonald of Ely officiated a Class A state semifinal, while former Tower resident Paul Raj, who now lives in Duluth, was on the court for the Class AAA finals.• At halftime of the AA final, Whitney Johnson of Tower-Soudan was on the court as one of 32 winners of the Minnesota State High School League AAA award, which honors students for outstanding achievements in academics, athletics and the arts.Johnson was the Section 7A AAA winner.• Charlie Merfeld was a basketball standout at Ely, scoring over 1,000 points in his career and helping Ely to a runner-up finish in the 1996 District 27 Tournament and a 20-win campaign the following season.Merfeld now teaches and coaches in Alaska, and he coached the small village of Gullivan to a fifth-place finish in Alaska’s Class A boys basketball tournament.• Ely senior Craig Jankowski wrapped up his college hockey career at Gustavus Adolphus when the Gusties were eliminated by St. Olaf in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference playoffs.The forward, a 2001 Ely graduate, played in 25 of 26 games for Gustavus and finished the year with three goals and seven assists.• Junior Nick Levar, a former teammate of Jankowski in high school, was on the roster at St. John’s, which was knocked out of the NCAA Division III Tournament by St. Olaf earlier this month.Levar played in 17 games, scored four goals and had six assists for St. John’s (23-3-2).• Marty Anderson, a 1994 Ely graduate, is on the boys hockey coaching staff at Albert Lea, which qualified for the State Class A Tournament for a second straight season.• Freshman Josh Weckman of Ely pitched two innings Wednesday in Itasca’s 6-2 community college baseball win over Mesabi, in the second game of a doubleheader held at the Metrodome.Former Babbitt-Embarrass-Soudan-Tower and Ely Legion star Lucas Stellmach had the game-winning hit as Itasca won the opener.
