THE UNDEFEATED 1970 ALMA RIVERMEN…GETTING SOME RESPECT, PART 2

Prior to the matchup against a 3-3-0 Winona Cotter, played in Winona, there was a twist in the A.P. polls.  In the recent poll Gale-Ettrick stayed #1 with Alma moving up to #4 in the “others”.  But there was a new wrinkle to the polls.   Kewaunee, which had been #10 in the Big Ten A.P. poll had notified the WIAA that their enrollment had dropped and they now had 592 students, eight under the minimum for the A.P. Big Ten poll so they were dropped to the Little Ten and as it turned out they were voted into the #10 spot the week of October 22, 1970.  The 32 points that they were awarded in the Little Ten poll would have kept them at #10 in the Big Ten poll.  The following week Kewaunee would move up in the Little Ten to the #7 spot. The poll posted on Wednesday.

Two days later on Friday night the Rivermen scored first against Cotter on a Jeff Bjork 16-yard interception return and with the 2-pt conversion Alma was up 8-0.  But a 55-yard strike from Cotters Steve Wiltgen to Mike Schultz showed that an opponent could score on the visitors.  The shutout run was over, but Alma wasn’t done.  The defense came up big holding Cotter to -31-yards on the ground and while the team allowed 150-yards passing they held their opponent to 119-total yards.  Cotter completed only nine of 30 passes but also tossed six interceptions with Bjork having three of those picks. Barry Ritscher was 6 of 13 for 94 yards and two scores, ran for 37 more, made nine unassisted tackles and scored the final touchdown on a 60-yard interception return.  With the win Alma moved up to the top spot on the A.P. "others" portion of the poll.

Now the final game was coming up against Elgin-Millville.  This would the fifth consecutive conference loss for the Watchmen as well as their fifth consecutive time that they had been shutout.  The 53-0 game was all Curt Gross.  The fullback scored five touchdowns, collected two 2-pt. conversion runs for 34 points and registered 31 unassisted tackles!  Those 34 points in the game moved him into the top spot in area scoring with a total of 118 points, jumping over Cochrane-Fountain City back Bill Baertsch who had 115 points in eight games.  Gross ended the season with a remarkable 127 tackles.  Barry Ritscher tossed two scores covering 60 and 33 yards against Elgin-Millville.

1971 Alma Yearbook…Note that there are 36 players on the squad…nearly every boy in the high school

1972 Alma Yearbook

It’s sort of strange that the final Little Ten poll showed Alma with an 8-0-0 record when they finished 9-0-0 BUT they got some respect as they jumped into the top 10 Little Ten A. P. poll.

Winona Daily News November 5, 1970

The local poll in the November 10, 1970 edition of the Winona Daily News had Alma tied for #1 with Gale-Ettrick.

Gale-Ettrick, Alma Eleva-Strum and Cochrane-Fountain City were the only Wisconsin schools on the list.  The rest are Minnesota schools including Spring Valley (MN) (Not to be confused with the Wisconsin village 60 miles north of Alma).

Honors came to six of the Rivermen by way of the All-Centennial Conference football first team, posted in the Daily News.  Curt Gross made it as a fullback after being named on the defense in 1969.  Barry Ritscher was named as the squad’s quarterback, Brian Ruff made it at the offensive guard spot, junior Bruce Mueller made the team at the center position.  On defense Tom Reiter and Steve Pearson were named as ends.  Jeff Youngbauer, Steve Brovold and Jim Lorenz were named to the honorable mention list.  Farther south of Winona the La Crosse Tribune named Ruff to the second team of their annual All-Coulee Region Team.

1971 Alma Yearbook

On the season the team gained 3,054 yards on offense for a 339.33 per game average and the defense held opponents to 364 total yards, a 40.44 average.  Individual stats are hard to come by, but Curt Gross gained about 800-yards on the ground, scored 17 touchdowns with 8 2-pt conversions and 127 tackles.  Barry Ritscher was 66-34-698-7 and gained 324 yards on the ground.  Jeff Bjork corralled at least six interceptions with three coming in the Cotter game. Of the stars on the team only one, Barry Ritscher, went on to play college ball where he played defensive back for four seasons at UW-River Falls.

Many of the football players were part of a very successful basketball 1970-71 season as well as winning the 1971 Wisconsin State Summer Baseball Championship.  The football winning streak would expand to 16-games before losing in the fourth game of the 1971 season. 

Realignment came to both sides of the Mississippi in 1971 with the Centennial Conference expanding to 10-teams, all Minnesota schools.  The Wisconsin based Dairyland Conference would expand with Alma joining.  The Riverman started 1971 with two shutouts and allowed a safety in game three before they lost to “the other Alma…Alma Center Lincoln 22-20.  Iverson would stay on as head coach until 1980 when, because of two consecutive 1-8 seasons in 1978 and 1979 along with just not enough players to compete the school dropped the sport for the 1981 season along with baseball for two seasons.  Lynn Iverson spent about 19 years as the head football coach and 35 years as a teacher at Alma.  He passed away a few years ago.

Being the smallest school in the Dairyland they came back on August 28, 1981, under a new head coach, to win the season opener 22-20 in overtime to, guess who?  Alma Center. The program would have its ups and downs as Alma stood on its own at various times after co-oping with Gilmartin as they made the WIAA playoffs in 1989, 1990 and 1996 before going on their own and making the playoffs 2004-07.  They then began co-oping with Pepin in 2009, and the Pepin/Alma 2014 and 2015 teams were the state Division 7 runner-up those years.  The pairing of these two seems to be successful as they have made the playoffs 14 times. 

What Lynn Iverson started, current coach Mike Olson of Pepin is continuing the success.

I want to thank Curt Gross for giving me the heads up on the 1970 ALMA season and Amanda Burrow, Spanish Teacher/Library Assistant at Alma Area Schools who supplied me with yearbook research information. They both helped make this story possible.