Tomorrow night I am going to Charlestown to witness an Indiana phenomena.  It is called the high school basketball sectional.  Every high school team has its place in the tourney.  The boys tournament starts tomorrow.

Sectionals are first.  Regionals are next.  Semi-State follows.  If you make it out of there you play in Indianapolis for a State Championship.

This past weekend I saw one of those state title games.  Our school, North Harrison, was represented by the Lady Cats in the girls 3A State Title Game.  We did not win.  We didn’t lose either.  It was a wonderful experience.  I will write about it at length when it is time to do so.

I was spoiled as a child when it came to Sectional Tourney action.  When I was a kid I lived in Brownstown, Indiana.  We played ten miles up the road in the Seymour Sectional.  It was and still is played in a gym that hold over 8000 people.  I believe it is the third largest high school gym in the United States.  Our sectional tickets were perforated.  There was a different piece of ticket for every night the games were held.  That document in your hand was like gold.  Today I bout a ticket in our high school office and was handed one ticket good for the entire tourney.  It gets punched at each session I choose to attend.

Is there irony here somewhere?  Well, yes, there is.  My school’s team the North Harrison Cougars will play the Brownstown Central Braves tomorrow night.  The Braves don’t play in Seymour anymore.  Something called “class basketball” came into play over twenty years ago.  There are champs in 4 classes that are based on school size (enrollment).  I am not a fan.  With class basketball came the restructuring of the Sectional.  Brownstown no longer plays ten miles up the road.  Folks in Brownstown don’t like that.  I don’t either.  Next to the fabled Jackson County Fair, the Seymour Sectional was the premiere social event of the year.  It was a great deal of fun.  I am glad I was there to witness it.

Playing in a State Title game like the Lady Cats did over the weekend was awesome and almost makes me embrace the class system.  I wasn’t there, but when Damon bailey led his Bedford North Lawrence team to the state title, the one class, one champ state title, there were over 40,000 people in the Hoosier Dome watching it.  That will never happen again.

So be it.  It is today.  We are in the here and now.  I am going to show up rooting for the North Harrison Cougars tomorrow night.  But I am sure someone I meet up with from Brownstown will be pining about the good old Seymour Sectional.  I will probably join them.

Speaking the Rights.

Danny Johnson