Submitted photo: Fort Dodge’s 1980-81 boys basketball team won the Big 8 championship with an 18-3 overall record. They were ranked No. 1 during the regular season. Mike Mosley (No. 52 in the back row) was an all-state center for the Dodgers. Mosley died on Tuesday.

Before he became Mr. Basketball in the state of Iowa while leading the Fort Dodge boys basketball team to the 1988 state championship, Wade Lookingbill was an impressionable fifth-grader at Cooper Elementary who immediately gravitated toward Mike Mosley’s game.

“I moved to Fort Dodge in the summer of 1979, and I can remember those early years going to the Dodger Fieldhouse on Friday nights,” Lookingbill said. “It was hot. It was packed. It was loud. And to me, it was the greatest level of basketball I’d ever seen.

“Mike Mosley was almost always the best player on the court. I remember how hard he worked. How tough he was. He was maybe a little undersized looking back now as a center at about 6 (feet) 4 (inches), but he seemed like a giant to me. For a young kid who loved the game, he was larger than life.”

Mosley passed away on Tuesday at the age of 59. The middle brother of a family filled with Fort Dodge athletic royalty in the 1970s and ’80s, Mosley was named to the all-state team in 1981 after averaging 16 points for a Dodger boys squad that went 18-3 overall.

“One of my oldest and closest friends, bar none!” posted Tim Salter, a former teammate and classmate of Mosley’s at FDSH. “Played sports together since the second grade at Duncombe Elementary. My father was our coach all through elementary, on to North Jr. High together, then on to be proud Dodgers. By one another’s side through it all … from every buzzer-beater to every 4th down and 10 — Dodger Fieldhouse or Dodger Stadium.

“Mike ate supper at my house before every home basketball game as one of our traditions … Will never forget and fondly recall the band starting up the Dodger fight song as we were ready to come out of the locker rooms. Could not fit another body in that Dodger Fieldhouse. Sold out each and every home game. I still have the occasional dream about those moments. After all of this time, it would still be the first thing we talked about when we would see one another.

“Mike’s sports accomplishments were secondary to his sweet, caring and gentle personality. I could go on forever, but it would simply just not do justice to the lifetime of memories we enjoyed, as he did with many others.”

That 1981 Fort Dodge squad set the table for an unprecedented stretch of Dodger basketball. Under head coach Arnie Zediker, the Dodgers were ranked No. 1 in the state and captured the Big Eight Conference title that winter. Mosley, a three-year varsity starter, averaged over eight points as a sophomore, 11 as a junior and then took his game to another level as a senior.

Fort Dodge was eliminated in the substate round by Sioux City North in both 1980 and ’81.

“You didn’t really get a chance to see basketball on TV or anything, so going to the Dodger Fieldhouse…that was the place to be,” Lookingbill said. “It’s what I grew up on, it’s where my love for basketball really flourished, and it’s where Mike was at his best.

“There was a program where you’d get to play at halftime of varsity games through, I think, the YBBA. Then you’d go swim in the pool (during the second half). I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to finish watching the Dodgers.”

Mike’s older brother, Sam, is widely regarded as the best overall athlete in Fort Dodge sports history. After an all-state career with the Dodgers that ended in 1978 and a standout run with the University of Nevada on the hardwood, Sam was drafted by the Phoenix Suns of the NBA and Seattle Seahawks of the NFL.

Mike’s younger brother, Tim, was a teammate of Lookingbill’s and an all-state wide receiver (1988) who became a star wideout and punter at the University of Northern Iowa. He eventually signed an NFL contract with the Denver Broncos.

Sam and Tim Mosley are both in the FDSH Athletic Hall of Fame.

Terry Carroll took over the Dodger boys program the year after Mike graduated. Fort Dodge went 16-6 in 1981-82; 14-5 in 1982-83 and 15-6 in 1983-84.

Gary Reiners then became head coach and guided the Dodgers to a third-place state finish and 20-4 mark in 1984-85. After going 14-9 in 1985-86 and 18-4 in 1986-87, Reiners stepped down to take an administrative role in the district. New coach Tom Goodman moved to town with his son, Jay, and alongside Lookingbill and a host of others, Fort Dodge won its only Iowa boys hoop crown in 1988 with a 23-1 record. It was the school’s fourth consecutive state appearance.

“Those teams with Mike paved the way,” Lookingbill said. “For us and for Dodger basketball. They motivated (younger players) to get better.”