Courtesy: Con Marshall, CSC Sports Information
One of Chadron State College all-time great basketball players, Norman (Bud) Larsen, died early Monday morning in the North Platte hospital at age 87.
Larsen had been hospitalized since breaking a leg during a fall at the family’s ranch near Springview in February. He had made significant recovery recently, but fell again late last week and died after undergoing more surgery.
He was born Dec. 3, 1931 at Black Pipe in Bennett County, S.D., to Arthur George and Edna Mae (Heeb) Larsen.
Larsen, who also played quarterback for the CSC football team, held the Eagles’ basketball career scoring record for 26 years and was a charter inductee into the CSC Athletic Hall of Fame in 1983.
He was an all-around athlete in high school. As a senior at Springview High in 1948, he quarterbacked the football team to a 10-0 record and Nebraska’s No. 1 ranking in Class C. He is listed as the Class C Player of the Year by Nebraska High School Sports published by Jerry Mather in 1980. The Knights outscored their opponents by an average of 39-2 points that season.
He also led the Springview basketball team to a 19-3 record and a berth in the state tournament his senior year, when he averaged 18 points a game and again earned all-state honors.
After spending a few days in Lincoln that fall planning to attend the University of Nebraska, Larsen decided he was, as he put it “still a country boy” and returned home and planned to break horses for a neighbor.
However, at the urging of Ross Armstrong, long-time Chadron State coach and administrator, Larsen enrolled at Chadron State. He was a standout in both football and basketball, but it was basketball where he really starred in college. He scored 1,605 points, an average of 17 points a game, and was the first CSC player to average 20 points a game his senior year in 1952-53.
Larsen’s scoring record stood until Steve Coon finished with 1, 646 points in 1979. Josh Robinson had tallied 2,041 points when he graduated in 1992, but Larsen’s total is still third on the Eagles’ all-time list. He was a three-time Nebraska College Conference first-team selection and was a second-team All-American as a senior.
He and Marilyn M. Willer of Chadron were married in the First United Methodist Church in Chadron on Aug. 16, 1953. He was a teacher, coach and principal and they lived in Valentine, Alliance, Omaha, Chadron, Stuart, Crawford, Cozad and Springview.
The Valentine and Alliance basketball teams he coached qualified for the state tournament.
Another of his life-long interests were raising and racing thoroughbreds. His horses ran on many tracks in the Midwest and in Arizona. He was honored as Nebraska’s Thoroughbred Breeder of the Year in 1984, when horses he raised, Bingo Johnny and Payola Miss, were the leading male and female money winners in Nebraska.
He was preceded in death by his parents, his wife (in July 2016), and brother Paul and sister Donna Brown, both of whom lived much of their lives in the Crawford area. Survivors include his children, Roger Larsen, Sturgis, S.D.; Ronda (Todd) Tracy, Maxwell, Neb.; Kellie Larsen, North Platte; and Sherry (Kyle) Wigington, Colorado Springs; family friend Sally Runge, North Platte; sister Patricia (Dale) Sampy, Ansley, Neb.; seven grandchildren and 13 grandchildren.
The family will have a private service, followed by interment in the Springview Cemetery.