FARGO — It was 34 years ago when Cardinal Muench basketball would call in its last game report to The Forum’s sports desk. As a college student working at the newspaper during the winter of 1990-91 and taking those calls, I had to learn quickly the “u” came before the “e.”

Suffice to say, I knew very little about the north Fargo seminary next to Edgewood Golf Course, just that the basketball team seemed to lose more games than it won.

With a small enrollment, the Cardinals basketball team was prone to large swings in its win-loss record from year to year. But there was nothing that could come close to its 71-game losing streak from 1983-1987, one of the longest droughts ever in the state — though far short of Epping’s 96-game skid in the mid-1960s.

But first, let’s trace the beginnings of this former campus.

The school, first called St. Pius X Minor Seminary, was to open in 1962 after renovations to the former Sacred Heart Convent building, which had been damaged during the deadly 1957 tornado. However, after Cardinal Aloisius Muench died in early 1962, the school was renamed in his honor.

By 1965, plans were in place for a new $1.9 million building with 120 dorm rooms in north Fargo. Along with its grades 9-12 offerings, the seminary would also partner with North Dakota State University to offer college curriculum. The new campus opened in 1966.

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Early on, Cardinal Muench had a team in the YMCA high school basketball league. By 1972, plans were put in place to have the 27-student school play a 15-game high school season with Class B status, as well as a track squad in the spring.

Larry Zillgitt was the school’s first athletic director and coach. Of the seven players deemed as possible starters that first year, 5-foot-11 junior Duane Dumdai would be its tallest.

The Cardinals would win their first-ever game, 38-33, over Argusville on Dec. 2, 1972, but that would be their only win that first season.

The talent level at Cardinal Muench ran the gamut throughout the years. To begin the 1973-74 season, junior Bob Klemisch averaged 30.7 points per game through the first four games but the Cardinals remained winless and would finish with a losing record once again.

They had winning seasons in 1974-75, 1978-79 and a 16-4 record in the 1979-80 season under new head coach Bob Hanyzewski.

Submitted / Diocese of Fargo

“Yes, there were good years, especially the first year,” Hanyzewski told the Sports Time Machine. “I even had coaches come up to me and say, ‘I don't know how you beat us.’”

However, the Cardinals would never win a single district playoff game. In 1980, a rebound basket by John Buringrud led to Cass Valley North’s 47-45 upset victory, perhaps the best opportunity Cardinal Muench had to advance.

The 16 wins in Hanyzewski's first season would be the school’s highwater mark.

The Cardinals would win just a handful of games during the next two seasons before a 73-55 win over East Grand Forks Sacred Heart on Jan. 25, 1983. It’d be the last win for 71 games.

David Samson / The Forum

Hanyzewski had just 12 players that season playing a varsity and B squad schedule. Two more winless seasons had the Cardinals on edge.

“The worst thing was some of these teams were so good, they would press us most of the game, and they were pushing 100 (points) a couple of times,” Hanyzewski said. “It would just literally destroy those kids. That's what made it more worse than ever. So yes, the attitude was changed, and what did it was we just got beat so dog-gone bad.”

Early in the 1984-85 season, Cardinal Muench suspended 13 players — practically the entire team — for violating training rules. Most teams helped Cardinal Muench restructure the schedule to get those games played later in the season.

By Feb. 8, 1985, a 77-37 loss to Casselton dropped Cardinal Muench to 0-12. Over time, Hanyzewski could feel the team wasn’t being responsive.

“Yes, it did affect the kids to some degree, but that was not their main thought. The main thought was religion and the school,” he said.

A returning player was a rarity. With students coming in from all parts of the Upper Midwest and beyond, they could realize priesthood was not for them or simply receive a call they were needed back on the family farm. There was no feeder program either so some kids had little exposure to the game before suiting up for the Cardinals.

As the losing continued, Hanyzewski would be appreciative of stronger teams pulling their starters early in the game.

“There were two coaches I got along with real well,” he said. “They would beat me by 30 points. When they got up 25-26 points, they would take out their first string and they’d let us come back. Every time we came back, the kids were so excited. Then when it came back to about 4-8 points, he’d put his first string back in. I always thanked them for that.”

He recalled a loss against Page when North Dakota State women’s coach Amy Ruley approached him after the game.

“‘I want to congratulate you coach,’” Hanyzewski recalls Ruley saying. “‘You put the people exactly where they needed to be in the press. But if they could only catch the ball, you may have won the game.’

“Honest to gosh, I felt so good. Because when you lose as many games as I did, you lose confidence in yourself. But after that, that made me feel good.”

Rob Beer / Forum News Service

Hanyzewski played one season of minor league baseball in 1964. Asked if his baseball mentality kicked in and helped him get through the lows of coaching, he remembered his father.

Ed Hanyzewski was a 12-game winner in the big leagues during World War II with the Chicago Cubs until an arm injury. The doctor didn’t show up for surgery and his playing career ended at 25 years old.

“All I wanted was to follow his footsteps,” Bob said, choking back tears. “He was good. He had the talent, much better talent than me, but I didn’t realize it, I didn’t have the talent.”

What kept him going too was the character of his players. Bob previously coached in Arizona and the football players there simply didn’t listen. Undefeated on the cusp of the state championship game, the players were involved in a fight, one stabbed.

“We lost the game 35-0,” he said.

“This is why I liked Cardinal Muench, because it was much better and you felt at peace. You didn't feel like you're always going to have to discipline the kids like at this other high school in Arizona.”

Still, the losses continued. After a 95-46 loss in a 1985 district opener at the Fargo Civic Center, the streak reached 47 games.

As supportive as the school was to Hanyzewski and his squad, Father John Riedman decided to make a change in the spring of 1985, naming John Conant, who assisted Hanyzewski the previous year, as head coach.

“I was ready,” said Conant, a former Oak Grove player who is now a longtime English teacher there. “I was fine. I’ll be honest, I’ve always said if I could have come here and coached under Marc Langseth, I would have been a bit better. I was awfully young.”

Hanyzewski stuck around as athletic director and teach, sometimes being a sounding board.

“He wouldn’t say much, but he did feel it, I could tell, because John was a good coach and he tried so hard to those kids,” Hanyzewski said. “But he didn't have too much success either.”

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The streak reached 53 early in 1986 after the Cardinals, leading Cass Valley North heading into the fourth quarter. The team went on to a winless season.

Practices were difficult, as Conant recalls there was at least one year they didn’t have enough kids to play five-on-five.

“I had my assistant coach who was a college kid playing defense or whatever,” he said.

By this time, The Forum and other media outlets were tracking every move. Conant has photo albums filled with photographs, rosters and newspaper clippings of Cardinal Muench.

Submitted / John Conant

Fan support usually consisted of the college students at Cardinal Muench and an assortment of staff and families, though there were a few years where there was not a player from Fargo-Moorhead.

And there were no cheerleaders, as it was an all-boys school. A band would typically play and the seminary would do its best to accompany the players. As for locker rooms, there was one and the Cardinals reserved that for their opposing team as Cardinal Muench players typically dressed and huddled in a classroom.

“I would say, in the six years that I was there, and I bet Bob would agree with this, in his later years, we seldom had a kid who could have played on his high school team in his hometown, seldom, not never. But there weren't many,” Conant said.

Submitted / John Conant

The streak would hit 66 in a 106-47 loss to Page on Dec. 11, 1986. By year’s end, Forum sportswriter Will Gullickson led his column wishing the Cardinals well after their 68th straight loss.

“Curt Monson wrote an article and it was about being noted for all the wrong reasons,” Conant recalled of the Jan. 8, 1987 column in The Forum. “And I told him once, and I’ll never forget the look on his face when I said, ‘We’re kind of like the defending champions,’ and Curt said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I said, ‘Because everybody comes in ready to play because they don’t want to be the ones to lose.’”

Even the student trainer came in to help. Allen Remily, a 5-10 forward, laced them up his senior season of 1987 to help provide, at the very least, a morale boost.

“We’re the most dreaded basketball team in North Dakota right now because of this stupid losing streak,” Remily told Monson. “It brings out the best in all our opponents because they sure don’t want to be remembered for stopping the streak.”

And Remily was right about one thing, telling Monson the streak would end that season.

Submitted / John Conant

Cardinal Muench hosted Kathryn on Jan. 13, 1987 and the visitors held a 51-44 lead with less than 4 minutes left in the game. That’s when the Cardinals began to fly.

Six straight points pulled them close, with Bruce Piechowski’s three free throws part of his game-high 26 points. Charles Bartunek’s jumper with 4 seconds left gave the Cardinals a 55-53 lead and a steal by Jay Barnick led to a foul — the game was officiated by Darrell Olson and Bucky Burgau — and a free throw provided the final margin.

“It's hard to explain,” Conant said recently. “I mean, if you can have pandemonium in a little gym like that, there was pandemonium, and it lasted for a long time into the night.”

Olson, who along with Burgau, has strong ties to Concordia, said a pay phone at the bottom of a stairwell helped spread the news.

"There was a kid on the phone, I think calling his mom, saying 'We won!" Olson recalls.

When the team called the score into The Forum, a reporter rushed to north Fargo to capture the scene, making it front sports page news.

“It was probably easier on me than Bob (Hanyzewski), simply because he'd been at it a long time,” Conant said. “For me, I was excited to be starting my coaching career. But by the time it was over, when we got that first win, it was such a weight off my shoulders.”

Following the game, several schools sent flowers and balloons to Cardinal Muench.

The Cardinals went on to win their next game 89-84 in double overtime against Circle of Life.

Submitted / John Conant

The Cardinal Muench high school folded in May 1991, leaving just 13 high school seminaries in the U.S. Any remaining students could opt to transfer to Shanley.

In 2010, Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo announced the college-level seminary would close due to financial reasons and in May 2011, the final two students graduated.

The sprawling campus went dark.

A couple years later, the building was razed , the property was sold and developed into more than 50 homes.

The former seminary was in my backyard. Demolished but not forgotten.

Carrie Snyder / The Forum