Scoring machine

When Paul Blowers took over the basketball program at Everett Junior College in the fall of 1956, his first task was to recruit some standout players.

And he found one in Dave Holden, a recent graduate of Seattle’s Garfield High School who had been an all-city and all-state selection for his

three high school seasons. Blowers talked the youngster into playing at Everett, where Holden had an immediate impact, scoring over 20 points a game in his first season and a conference-best 27 points a game in his second.

He was, recalled Blowers, “a scoring machine. He was an extremely good

shooter either with a left-handed hook shot or a right-handed hook shot, or he could go outside and shoot a set shot. He was just very, very good at shooting.”

Holden remains one of the all-time leading scorers at what is today Everett Community College, and on Wednesday night he will be one of seven individuals inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. Three teams will also be inducted at a banquet in the school’s new Fitness Center, with former Seattle SuperSonic guard Slick Watts to be the event’s keynote speaker.

“It’s a big honor for me that they remember me from so long ago,” said Holden, who is 74 and lives today in Kent. “It means a whole lot that they even remembered me and thought about me for this recognition. I didn’t realize that I did that much for them to remember.”

Holden was a 6-foot-3 forward who even played some center on occasion. “Centers were not that tall at the time and I got away with it,” he said. “And I was able to jump a little bit.

“But today,” he quipped, “I’d be too short even for point guard.”

In Holden’s first season and for most of his second the team practiced at Everett’s South Middle School and played its home games at Everett High School. Near the end of his final season the school opened its new gymnasium a few blocks south of the main campus, which was also nearing completion.

Holden and his teammates played their final game of the 1957-58 season in the new gym, which was recently demolished to make way for a new structure at Providence Regional Medical Center Colby Campus.

“Our crowds were pretty enthusiastic and lively,” Holden said. “And there was a lot of people at those games, as I remember. … I was excited to be there. And I really tried hard to be as good as I could be.”

His talent “was very obvious after a few games,” Blowers said. “He was our go-to guy. We found out Dave could shoot so well, so many of our plays were to feed the ball to Dave. And he could really shoot.”

After his two seasons in Everett, Holden had the chance to continue playing for a four-year college team. Among the top programs recruiting him were Seattle and Oregon, plus smaller Northwest schools like Eastern Washington and Montana State.

But Holden was married by this time and already had a child, and he was ready to begin a career as a musician. He spent the summer after his second season at Everett playing with a band at nightclubs in California, and “it was very exciting for me,” he said. “So I decided right then that what I wanted to do for the rest of my life was to play music, and I turned down the chance to go back to school and play basketball.”

It turned out to be a good decision. A keyboard player and singer, he later performed with such stars as Sammy Davis Jr., Pearl Bailey and James Brown. And music has taken him many places in this country and overseas, including England and Japan.

“My whole life I never had another kind of job, and I worked for 50 years,” Holden said. “I was probably one of the best known unknowns that was working all the time. I didn’t get the recognition, but I was always working.”

Arthritis prevents him from playing much anymore, but he is still involved with music as the owner of the One Stop Music Studio at his home in Kent.

Over the years, he said, “I missed basketball. And every chance I got, in whatever town I was in, I’d try to go play. But music doesn’t leave you time to do much else. If you’re trying to learn and keep working and get your rest and do all these other things, music is all consuming.”