Former opponent remembers the sound of 'Fast Freddy' on the court

There are two sounds I can never seem to forget.

One is the snow shovel scraping along the concrete basketball court I cleared in the Petersburg winters of my youth, basketball in hand.

The second is the chain-link basketball net clanging on a Wrangell playground.

One is the reason for the other.

My future teammates and friends loved the game and knew what awaited us in the high school gyms across Southeast Alaska.

And in Wrangell, one of the best awaited: Fred Angerman Jr.

As a fifth grader, my lessons in basketball began as Vikings great Dave Ohmer took me under his wing and annihilated me on playground courts through each offseason he wasn't leading Petersburg on the high school hardwoods.

I honed my defensive skills, as that is all I could seem to accomplish against the guard who had just set the state single-game scoring record.

I remember one lesson. My idol, now about to start his second year at college, drove me to the end of the road in Petersburg, where we could see Wrangell. Standing on the edge of the water, he said, "Can you hear that?"

I wasn't sure what I was listening for.

"That is Fred Angerman scoring," he said pointing across the waters. "That is Fred tearing up the playground."

There was a skiff ride one day to Wrangell. A walk through town to the outdoor court. The chance to see, to feel, to hear.

There were echo-like "bangs" or "bongs" when balls hit their mark, but the metal rims and chain nets make a perfect shrill "clink" when Angerman shot and the ball would freeze dead in the center and slowly fall out.

I remember nothing else about that day. Just the skiff ride home, my stomach in knots, the waves soothing my nervous energies.

"He was fearless," Ohmer said. "They call him Fast Freddy but he was Fearless Freddy to me. He was confident, shot from anywhere. ... He was stocky, strong, played like a big guard. ... We Petersburg guys hated all the Wrangell guys we played against but we liked Freddy."

Fast forward to my high school freshman season. I am a starting guard for Petersburg. Coach Steve Eberly, God bless his basketball heart, makes me guard senior Fred Angerman Jr. every game we face them that 1974-75 season.

That's the season Angerman led the Wolves to the Southeast championship against Sitka, Juneau, Ketchikan, Haines, Mt. Edgecumbe and us. He made the All-State Tournament team.

When "Fast Freddy" passed away at age 68 on March 9, the day after his son, Cody, coached the Wolves in the regional tournament to win a berth at state, all those remembrances swirled slowly in my mind, much like the perfect backspin of a weathered ball floating in the winds of Wrangell and settling in the center of a rusting metal hoop.

I see his elbows tucked in before his shot, his running motion down court after he made the basket, his hair somewhere between the look of the '70s and the cuts of our fathers, his teammates' screens. He meant a lot to so many.

"Dad definitely had a deep reach," Cody Angerman said. "He was always the most reliable person, but kept his distance when it came to opinions. He was never a helicopter parent and never critiqued how I played or how I coached."

When long-time Wrangell coach Ray Stokes moved to Wrangell, Freddy, a game official and maintenance man at the school, made an impact. "He would let you tell him what you thought. ... He didn't let it change the way he called the game but it made you feel better," Stokes said.

"He could come into the gym before my practice with his Leatherman and flashlight strapped to his belt, go to the corner and tell the boys, 'feed me,' and they were always amazed how a maintenance guy could grab a ball in his work clothes and shoot it high into the air and see the consistent results day after day."

Former Mt. Edgecumbe coach and Wrangell Wolves star Archie Young said, "Growing up as a kid in Wrangell, Fred Angerman was a barometer, if not the barometer, for where you ranked in the hierarchy of Wrangell basketball. Wrangell holds an annual three-on-three Fourth of July Tournament and for years, if you wanted to win, you had to beat some combination of Jeff Jabusch and Fred Angerman," Young said.

"I can still recall the first time I was part of a team that beat him. I was playing with my cousins Rick and Dino. It was such a feeling of, 'Damn it, I finally beat Freddy!' ... As I became a coach, and traveled to Wrangell, I knew he would be officiating. I loved the way he would say, 'Oh NO,' when I would argue a call and he was certain I was wrong."

Lifelong friend Jeff Jabusch was a senior when Fred was in eighth grade. They grew up in the same neighborhood.

"I even sold him his first bike which I had outgrown," Jabusch said. "Fred was my best friend."

"Over the last 45 years, Fred and I played over 1,000 games of tennis, countless basketball games, officiated hundreds of games, coached little kids basketball together and he helped me with the Elks Hoop Shoot."

One thing to remember, Jabusch said, is that Angerman played at a time when small schools like Wrangell went up against teams from bigger schools in Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka, "and at the state level against the Anchorage and Fairbanks schools ... and (he) was still great."

(The Sentinel edited this story for space. The full version is at juneauempire.com/sports/pure-sole-fast-freddy.)