The memorial for Bob McLeod is Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Whitefish High School gym, fittingly, because he was the basketball coach during that magical 1969-70 basketball season.

And also because this celebration of life should draw a crowd.

“I was fortunate to have two really good coaches in my career, and he was one of them,” said Julio Delgado, the junior point guard on that championship team. “Two of them really influenced my life.”

One was Mesa College baseball coach Jim Frye, and the other was McLeod. Both of them were taskmasters who told Delgado the same thing: If you need help with anything, you call me anytime, day or night. Frye passed away in January of 2023; McLeod died last summer.

The sum of McLeod is certainly greater than one championship season, the first for the Bulldogs’ basketball program. Yet it remains a compelling bit of history.

Delgrado was part of a class that foreshadowed that season by not losing a basketball game in seventh grade, eighth grade or ninth. 

Then came sophomore year.

“McLeod had teachers’ kids, board members’ kids that were juniors and seniors,” Delgado remembered. “We came up as sophomores — this was the Big 32 — and he started four of us.”

“We didn’t do terribly well that year, but we got good experience,” said Ron Rosenberg, another of the fantastic four along with Dick Robison and Kelly Quigley. “Bob kind of sacrificed his good standing in Whitefish with the upperclassmen’s parents. Because he could see the writing on the wall. The chance at a state title was with us.”

“McLeod didn’t give a crap,” said Delgado. And if the following season didn’t start out all that well — the Big 32 had ended, but the Bulldogs would lose twice to Flathead and drop games to Deer Lodge, Anaconda, and Anaconda Central — it certainly ended well.

The Bulldogs, with big man Steve Kastella leading the way, went 20-6. They beat Laurel 54-44 for the State A championship (Flathead, with Brent Wilson, won the AA title the same night).

“We had our moments,” McLeod told the Daily Inter Lake after the tournament. “But we always recovered quickly.”

Born in Belt and educated in Fairfield, McLeod — Big Bad Bullet Bob was one nickname — played hoops for what was then Western Montana College. In December of 1954 he and the Bulldogs played two games in Caldwell, Idaho, against the College of Idaho.

Among the Yotes that season, on his way to the Basketball Hall of Fame, was Elgin Baylor. McLeod told Rosenberg he was told to front the big man, and he did, but that Baylor easily caught an entry pass, turned and dunked over the Bulldog center Way over. As in Baylor’s shoes were higher than his teammates’ shoulders.

After a stint in the armed forces, McLeod once again became a Bulldog, this time in Whitefish. 

It’s hard to overestimate the number of lives he affected, from athletes to teachers and coaches. As his retirement neared, McLeod showed Delgado a bundle of 200 letters. All of them were critical of his demonstrative, taskmaster boys basketball coach. “Can I look at those?” Delgado, who guided the Bulldogs to their second title in 1991, asked. “Hell, no,” McLeod replied.

“He was a hell of a man,” Rosenberg said, and he’s talking about more than that championship season. But that season was magical, and McLeod seemed to know it.

“Whitefish has never won a state title in basketball,” Great Falls Tribune columnist Rich Farrell wrote on the eve of the tournament. “And McLeod thinks it’s about time.”

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 406-758-4463 or at fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com.