Classes Still Create Hoosier Hysteria
July 27, 2017
By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
This is the fourth part in a series on MHSAA tournament classification, past and present, that will be published over the next two weeks. This series originally ran in this spring's edition of MHSAA benchmarks.
Twenty years ago, Bloomington North High School won the Indiana High School Athletic Association boys basketball championship, defeating Delta 75-54 at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.
The date, March 22, 1997, is at the same time revered and disdained by traditionalists in the state who saw it as the last schoolboy championship game the state would ever host.
That’s how devout the game of basketball, particularly interscholastic basketball, had become in the Hoosier state during the 87 years a state champion – one state champion, to be precise – was crowned.
Following that 1997 season, the IHSAA moved to a four-class system for its roundball tournaments, like so many of its state association counterparts had done years earlier.
It would be shocking to find more than a small percentage of current high school basketball players around the country unfamiliar with the iconic movie Hoosiers, even though the film is now more than 30 years old.
And, the storyline for that blockbuster unfolded more than 30 years prior to its release, when small-town, undermanned Milan High School defeated Muncie Central High School 32-30 in the 1954 IHSAA title game.
Perhaps it’s because of the David vs Goliath notion, or the fame of the movie that replaced Milan with the fictional Hickory and real-life star Bobby Plump with Hollywood hero Jimmy Chitwood, or the simple fact that Indiana had something other states didn’t.
Whatever the reason, plenty of opposition remains to this day to basketball classification in the state.
The fact is, the small rural schools were regularly being beaten handily by the much larger suburban and city schools as the tournament progressed each season.
Small schools also were closing at a rapid rate following the state’s School Reorganization Act in 1959, as students converged on larger, centralized county schools. From 1960 to 2000, the number of schools entering the tournament dropped from 694 to 381, and in 1997 a total of 382 schools and 4,584 athletes began competition at the Sectional level (the first level of the IHSAA Basketball Tournament).
It was at the entry level of the tournament where school administrators felt the pain of the new class system, but not necessarily for the same nostalgic reasons as the fans who either attended or boycotted the tournament.
At the Sectional round of the tournament, the IHSAA was culling just 2 percent of the revenue, with the participating schools splitting the balance. So, when Sectional attendance dropped by 14 percent in that first year of class basketball, many schools realized a financial loss. It was money they had grown to count on in prior years to help fund various aspects of the department.
Schools cumulatively received more than $900,000 from Sectional competition in 1998, but that total was down from more than $1 million in the last year of the single-class tournament.
Yet, the current format provides a great deal more opportunity and realistic chances at championship runs for schools of all enrollments.
To date, 60 additional teams have championship or runner-up trophies on display in school trophy cases around Indiana.
That was the mission in front of then-IHSAA commissioner Bob Gardner (now National Federation executive director) once the board made its decision: to give thousands more student-athletes the opportunity for once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
As any statistician knows, figures can be manipulated to tell any side of a story. Declining attendance in year one of class basketball is such a number.
The truth is tournament attendance had been on a steady downward spiral since its peak of just over 1.5 million in 1962. By the last single-class event in 1997, the total attendance was half that.
The challenge then and today, as it is for all state associations, is to find that delicate balance for those holding onto tradition, those holding onto trophies, and the number of trophies to hand out.
Editor’s Note: Stories from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette in 1998 and from a 2007 issue of Indianapolis Monthly provided facts in this article.
St. Francis Turns Slight Friday Lead Into Memorable Championship Sweep
June 8, 2024
BIG RAPIDS – Traverse City St. Francis freshman Casey Jackson assigned some of the credit for his teammates’ Lower Peninsula Division 3 championship success this weekend to their matching bucket hats, which proved a key accessory during Saturday’s drizzly second round at Katke Golf Course.
But the Gladiators’ first Finals championship since 2008 was more a product of scores falling along with the raindrops.
They improved from 14th a year ago to first this weekend by building a three-stroke lead on Jackson Lumen Christi during Friday’s first round and extending it to an 18-stroke victory by the end of Saturday, finishing with a two-day 640 as the Titans finished at 658 and Grand Rapids West Catholic and Grand Rapids Covenant Christian tied for third at 668.
St. Francis carded a 328 on Friday but cut that to 312 during the second round, in part on the surge of junior David Ansley. He shot an 80 on Friday to tie for seventh individually, but came back Saturday with a 72 to set up a tie-breaker for medalist with Elk Rapids sophomore Baron Vollmer – and clinched it by dropping what he estimated to be a 20-foot putt.
All told, four of five Gladiators cut strokes from their first to second rounds. Freshman Casey Jackson dropped a stroke to tie for ninth at 80-79-159, and junior Josh Slocum carded 85-77-162 to tie for 16th individually. Sophomore William Gibbons also cut two strokes to finish at 88-86-174, and senior Owen Jackson remained consistently solid at 83-84-167.
“I’ve grown up with these guys for years now, and it just feels so surreal because we did what we wanted to do this season,” Jackson said. “It feels like our chemistry is so good together, and we worked for this so hard.”
The Gladiators put plenty of distance between themselves and the field, with their Saturday score made more impressive by the fact only Lumen Christi (327) and Tawas (329) joined St. Francis in breaking 330 – not only for the second round, but the entire weekend.
“That was our job today, go out and try to put a little pressure,” St. Francis coach Jim Hornyak said. “We only had a two-stroke lead and wanted to put some pressure and make the other teams have to come and get us, and hopefully cause some issues.
“(My team) just played awesome today.”
That was finished off by Ansley, who thought he had a good chance to climb the individual standings after shooting 80 on Friday, but probably not enough to win it all.
At the end, Ansley sank the long putt to finish the St. Francis championship sweep.
“That last putt, I didn’t expect it to go in. I just hit it as hard as I could almost and hoped that it went in,” he said. “I was like, I already won a team championship, I have nothing to lose. So I was like whatever, let’s just hit it and hope it goes in.”
The top 11 individuals all finished within seven strokes of the lead. Millington junior Brad Coleman finished third, just two strokes back.
PHOTOS (Top) Traverse City St. Francis’ David Ansley putts during Saturday’s second round at Katke Golf Club. (Middle) Elk Rapids’ Baron Vollmer sends his ball out of the sand. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)