News / Sports / Clark County Sports

Former Vancouver High, UW star Guisness dies at 87

He was Huskies’ career scoring leader in 1952

By Scott Hanson, The Seattle Times

Published: April 11, 2018, 5:54pm

Frank Guisness, the career scoring leader for the Washington men’s basketball team for a season, died Thursday at age 87.

Guisness, a two-time All-Pacific Coast Conference selection, finished his UW career in 1952 with 1,070 points. He was surpassed the next year by All-American Bob Houbregs.

Guisness was born in Minnesota but moved to Vancouver as a youngster, and was a star basketball player at Vancouver High, averaging 20 points as a senior.

Guisness had a career scoring average of 11.9 for his three seasons as a Husky. As a junior, the 6-foot-2 forward averaged 13.1 points and led the Huskies to the 16-team NCAA tournament.

He scored 22 and 21 points in back-to-back games against UCLA in the PCC playoffs that gave the Huskies the league title. He had a team-high 16 in UW’s NCAA tournament-opening win against Texas A&M before a loss to Oklahoma State.

In 2005, Guisness told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “(Legendary UCLA coach) John Wooden gave me the highest compliment. He said, ‘One guy can’t check Guisness.'”

Guisness, who entered the Husky Hall of Fame in 2000, was drafted in the fourth round by the NBA’s Baltimore Bullets, but did not play in the NBA because of a military commitment. He played in 1956 for the Buchan Bakers, an AAU power that won that year’s national title, before becoming an auto sales manager in Seattle.

At Vancouver High, the 6-foot-2 Guisness was a junior on the 1947 team that lost the state championship game to Pasco.

Guisness was inducted into the Clark County sports Hall of Fame in the 1960s. He recalled that Skeets O’Connell, then a physical education teacher at Lincoln Elementary School and later the basketball coach at Clark College, first got him interested in basketball.

He was a fixture at Husky basketball games. He was still going to games this season, and “running 650 steps a day in January” until he got sick in February, said JoAnne Guisness, who was married to Frank for 58 years.

“He was a star in high school, a star in college and a star in the car business,” JoAnne said.

In addition to his wife, Guisness is survived by children Mary and Greg and eight grandchildren. A memorial service will be held May 5 at Saint Bridget Catholic Church in Seattle.

Information from The Columbian archives was included in this article

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