While I have not gotten into the gym as often I wish I had, the North Harrison High School Cougars basketball team plays tomorrow in a sectional game that we are hosting and I just know good things are to come.  I feel good about the Cougars’ chances.  I think they can do it.  In the games that I have seen them play, they have been an impressive bunch.

Indiana high school basketball.  There is still nothing like it.  I believe that.  I was not a proponent of class basketball.  If you are, good for you.  I have seen both sides of it.  I worked at class A school, Medora, the smallest of the small save Cannelton, and I know hearts were broken when it meant the end of the Seymour Sectional for Jackson County schools Seymour, Brownstown, Crothersville, and Medora.  That was the place to be.  I covered all that in earlier posts when the Lady Cats went calling twice to Seymour in the regular season and then in the Sectional.  Don’t get me started.

“Welcome to Indiana basketball.”

That is my favorite line in the movie Hoosiers.  Coach Norman Dale says that to himself as he is about to enter the gym for his first game with the fictional Hickory Huskers.  What a team.

You can only understand this team picture in its fullness if you live in the state of Indiana.     I believe that.  This football guy has that picture in a frame!

Indiana High School Basketball.  I have had a few good memories with it.

When I was seven I was there when Jim Brown hit the “shot heard round the county”.  Jim played for Brownstown Central and the Braves were playing against county rival Seymour Owls in December 1975.  Jim put one up from the baseline as time was drawing to a close.  Braves 61 Owls 60.  I’m still glad I was there.  I saw Jim last week.  He is a dear friend.

When I was a kid at North Harrison we played in the Floyd Central Sectional and that was always dominated by the home team…Floyd.  In 1976 the North Harrison Cougars won the Floyd Central Sectional.  That was a great feat.

In the mid-1980s North Harrison moved sectional locations.  They went west to Crawford County and found much success. Starting in 1985, my junior year, NHHS won 6 consecutive sectional titles.  They won another in 1996.  That was the last one.  My old friend Ken Oppel was the coach of that team.  Ken was one of the good guys.

So class basketball came.  I equated it to bye bye Hoosier Hysteria Pie.  That is a guy about to turn fifty talking.  The kids today, you know, the ones actually playing the game, don’t know any better.  That is the way it should be.  They just play the next game.  You and I would too.

Memories…

This is true.  I know some of you won’t believe it…but it is true.  I owe it to my friend the late Jim Stewart to tell you about it.

Jim Stewart was a coaching/educating legend.  He is no longer with us.  He hired me at Medora in 1998 and we quickly became friends with an unbelievable understanding.  He was in charge.  I was not.  I gave him everything I had.  He deserved it.

Jim Stewart worked at thirteen different schools.  Corydon Central was one of them.  He was the head basketball coach and teacher there in the early 1970s.  He worked all over the state of Indiana.  He coached in more gyms than any other coach in the history of the game, I have no doubt.  Why did he work for 13 schools?  He was a stand-up guy.  He had conviction.  He would not compromise his beliefs.  Jim stood about five feet six inches tall.  There was no one bigger in the room, I assure you.

When Jim was coaching his first game at Medora, in a scene cut from the movie Hoosiers, some fans and parents were concerned about how things were going.  They were huddled up near the top of the bleachers and they delegated one of their membership to go talk to the coach about how things were going and that the team needed a different defensive scheme.

This happened on the sideline as the teams were warming up before the second half:

Delegate:  Coach, we think your defense isn’t working.

Coach Stewart:  Well, we are not the coach.  I am.  And who is we, anyway?

Delegate:  Me and my bunch up there.

He pointed to a group of parents and fans looking down on the scene with their arm crossed and waiting for an answer to their request of a defensive change.

Coach Stewart:  I have an answer for them.  Here’s what you need to do.  You need to go back up there and tell them all to kiss my ass.  I am the coach.  They’re not.  So watch the game.

It was the best thing he could have said.  They got it.  He was in.

Jim Stewart worked at Medora Schools as the high school principal and head basketball coach for 12 years.  It was his longest tenure at any school he worked and he told me on more than one occasion that it was his best stop along the way.  I learned so much from him.  He was the best.  I miss him so much.

One more Medora story.  I was teaching English in 1999 at Medora.  One of the basketball players was in my class.  He was a junior.  That Friday night we were playing Dugger.  Dugger had a player that to this day is the best high school basketball player I have ever seen on a court. His name is Brody Boyd.  He played for the Iowa Hawkeyes when he left the gyms like Medora’s.  Anyway, this kid in my class was charged with guarding Boyd.  He told me he was going to shut him down.  In the third quarter, as I was doing the public address announcing at the game, my student was checking back into the game and here is what he said as he looked at me:

“He’s really lighting us up tonight.  I think he’s got 38 so far…”

I laughed into the mic.

NH Cougars Basketball…this is your time.  Go get it!

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson