Appleknockers - Cobden (IL) Junior-Senior High School

It’s quite simple, really. An appleknocker is someone who knocks apples. Off trees. To harvest them.

It’s also something you might call someone who lives in an area where there are lots of apple orchards. And that does indeed describe Cobden, a town of about 1,000. It’s located in the Shawnee Hills, at the very southern tip of Illinois.

Plenty of peaches too

Founded in 1859, the town took off when the Illinois Central Railroad came through. Today, it supports the nearby farms, orchards, and wineries. Perhaps reflecting that fact, more than half the residents are Hispanic. According to Wikipedia, notable people include an author I never heard of and a murderer.

Well, that's an interesting motto

The high school has only 170 or so students. It’s so small it shares the same building with the junior high school.

That small size, though, once made it famous. In 1964, the tiny high school somehow made it to the state basketball championships. Kind of like the Illinois version of Hoosiers. Except, of course, they lost.

It’s actually quite an incredible story. The first thing you have to realize is that there were no divisions back then. Every team in the state had a chance to win it all.

Even this guy!

Second, the team, which had been playing together since 6^th grade, lost two of its members before the season even began. One tragically drowned on a swim with some teammates. The other knocked up his girlfriend, had to marry her, and was then forced off the team.

Finally, though the team spent a long, silent ride back from Champaign, they were amazed, dumbfounded, knocked over when they got back to Cobden. Seems the whole town had come out to welcome them, lining the route into town for a mile and a half and shutting down the town center with throngs of people.

Heck, the story even made it to Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. There’s also a book on it as well.

• In 1964, the Appleknockers from Cobden, Illinois, Made It All the Way to th | The National Endowment for the Humanities (neh.gov)
• The Amazing Appleknockers: Illinois' Cinderella Basketball Team of 1964: Campbell, Teri, Ryman, Anne: 9780981938646: Amazon.com: Books

By the way, “appleknocker” is also defined as an “unsophisticated country person.” Sounds like the team may have been derisively called that by their opponents early on. As the US did with “Yankee Doodle,” though, Cobdenites took the insult and embraced it. We’ll hear of that theme again in this blog.