Leslie "Les" Witte nicknamed "Beanie" and "One Grand Witte", was a two-time consensus All-America

All-America

An All-America team is an honorary sports team composed of outstanding amateur players—those considered the best players of a specific season for each team position—who in turn are given the honorific "All-America" and typically referred to as "All-American athletes", or simply...

n basketball player for the Wyoming Cowboys in 1932 and 1934. A forward, he was the first All-American in University of Wyoming

University of Wyoming

The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...

 history and was also the first Wyoming player to score 1,000 career points, finishing with 1,069, which was the inspiration for his "One Grand Witte" nickname.

A native of Lincoln, Nebraska

Lincoln, Nebraska

The City of Lincoln is the capital and the second-most populous city of the US state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska. Lincoln's 2010 Census population was 258,379....

, Witte played football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 and basketball at Lincoln High School from 1927–28 to 1929–30. In football, he helped his teammate (and future National Football League

National Football League

The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...

 player) Bernie Masterson

Bernie Masterson

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 lead the 'Links' to a 23–0–2 record, while in basketball he also guided the team to a 40–10 record between 1929 and 1930. In his senior

Senior (education)

Senior is a term used in the United States to describe a student in the 4th year of study .-High school:...

 season of 1929–30 the basketball team won the state championship.

Les Witte was the younger brother of Cowboys head coach Willard "Dutch" Witte who coached Les for his entire career, including the national championship-winning team his senior season when Wyoming finished with a 26–3 record. In the pre-NCAA Tournament days, the Helms Foundation voted to determine the national champions. Being the only college basketball voting poll of the era, Helms had the authority on issues such as All-America selections and national champions.

The Spalding Guide, an early sports magazine that focused primarily on baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 but dabbled in other sports, once wrote about Witte in a 1932 issue,

"Witte was the cleverest player to show in the conference in a long time. This boy's dribbling, pivoting and feinting, and his lefthand arch shots, could not be stopped."

Despite great college success, Witte never played professionally because there were no viable professional leagues during that time. The Basketball Association of America

Basketball Association of America

The Basketball Association of America was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. The league merged with the National Basketball League in 1949, forming the National Basketball Association ...

(BAA) would not even exist until 1946, well after Witte's prime.