50 Years of Pride in Area Young People

What can you say about something that has lasted 50 years? Apparently it has served a purpose or purposes. I think this magazine certainly has done that for the Texas South Plains and Panhandle region, and it’s due to the vision of Danny Andrews and Garet von Netzer, who started it five decades ago. Their accounts of the early days and the growth of the magazine and of basketball are fascinating, and you can find those on pages 22 (Andrews) and 26 (von Netzer).

From the photos of Palo Duro’s Fred Mitchell and Canyon’s Lynn Davis on the first cover to the 11 cover photos of this year’s outstanding boys and girls to the hundreds of teams and thousands of area players showcased inside the magazine through the years, Panhandle-Plains Basketball has attempted to do what Caprock girls coach David Smiley described here:

“Since I was a player, being a part of this has been a blessing. I can say it because I have coached in other parts of the state, and there is nothing like this anywhere else in the state, and that is a shame! You guys do such a great job of promoting basketball and noticing our kids when they would go unnoticed otherwise.”

The top players do get noticed in TV sportscasts and newspaper reports, but not so much for the young people who come off the bench and might be honorable mention all-district or just a potential letter-winner. We try to mention as many of them as we can in our team profiles and publish their photo headshots.

We do give plenty of space to those who reach the pinnacle in Texas, the state championship. Look in the color section for photos of this year’s champions, plus in-depth stories on the Clarendon boys (page 14), Gruver girls (page 17) and Lubbock Christian High girls (page 20).

In this 50th edition, we have returned to past decades on a few pages, listing the players the magazine chose 25 years ago as the best of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s plus those selected each year for our first-team Super Teams from 1997 to 2022. Fans of Panhandle and South Plains schools will find lots of names they recognize.

As for our shared basketball past, we have an announcement: The Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University plans to digitize every page of the magazine’s first 50 years. Eventually all the magazines will be available online for all to search and peruse.

An explanation for the expanded cover of this 50th edition: The area has so many outstanding players that we decided to take cover photos of even more than in the past. They spill over to a “second cover,” but that doesn’t mean those you see when you turn the page are secondary to the athletes on the front. They’re all equal in our eyes, and those on the second page were put there by chance.

For the past 12 of the 50 years, the magazine has been published by the two brothers and sister listed below, and we take seriously the responsibility of continuing the “baby” that Garet and Danny created. We thank all who helped with this edition: Danny Andrews, Dana Burgin of Hot Shots Photography, C&R Bindery, Mark Gilliam of Lindsay Web Press, Mark Hartsfield of Hartsfield Design, Kathy Haynes, Brady Hochstein and others at ColorArt Printing, Lance Lahnert, Kevin Lewis, Cathy Martindale, Tricia Odom, Lee Passmore and Dave Wohlfarth.

And great thanks go to the schools, coaches, parents, booster clubs, cheer sponsors, businesses, colleges and fans who make PPB possible.

We believe the photo below illustrates not only the love of sports in the Panhandle and South Plains, but the intense pride and support of our schools and communities for our young people.

Mike Haynes, Sheri Haynes and David Haynes Co-Publishers