Torch Bearers Have Sports Connections
September 28, 2016 at 4:38 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
And there is good reason for that.
The torch will begin its day at the Tiger Athletic Complex in Warsaw, which is appropriate and symbolic of not only what sports mean to Kosciusko County, but also to the state as a whole.
Sports matter to us more in Kosciusko County than about anywhere else in the state. Sure, you can find more athletic teams or better individual athletes in the bigger Hoosier cities, but those teams also play before crowds often disguised as empty seats.
Barb Martz will be the first to carry it. Martz is a Warsaw Community High School grad who was a member of the 1991 girls basketball state runner-up team. She has stayed here in her hometown to become an outstanding teacher and coach and give back to her community.
She will take a lap around the newly lined track surface at the TAC holding the torch, which has a camera built into it. As each torch bearer carries the torch on its journey, they can click a button that will take a picture of the scenery around it and the entourage that is traveling with it. Organizers then download those pictures for people following the torch around the state via the internet to see.
Martz will then hand off the torch to Jeff Shriver, the now co-head coach of the Tippecanoe Valley football team. He will be carrying the torch in memory of his longtime friend and colleague Scott Bibler, just days before the first anniversary of the plane crash that took his life and the lives of three others. Shriver will take the torch through a tunnel of current Tippecanoe Valley football players out the gate of the complex and out Tiger Lane, where he will hand it to Rita Price.
Price, who will go down as one of the state’s most decorated broadcasters and the most decorated female broadcaster ever, will take the torch for a ride in a convertible north on Ind. 15. She is a pioneer in broadcasting, becoming a woman behind the microphone of high school sporting events when that job was exclusively performed by men.
The torch will then travel up Ind. 15, hang a right in Leesburg and move east on CR 500N (Armstrong Road), through Oswego and north into North Webster before spending the afternoon and evening in Syracuse.
The local committee has done a great job of selecting people who represent us to carry the torch, and it will pass by places and things that “are” Kosciusko County.
Sports has so much to do with our history. While basketball’s birth place is Springfield Massachusetts, the cradle of civilization for girls basketball is here. The Warsaw Lady Tiger team of 1975-76 showed us all what can be done and blew away all the existing stereotypes about girls and sports. Judy Warren was the first Miss Basketball, and Shanna Zolman left Wawasee for Knoxville, Tenn., after scoring more points than any girl ever had at that time.
This county is home to 120 lakes, some of which will bear the fleeting reflection of the Bicentennial Torch as it passes by Thursday. It’s always been a great place to catch pan fish, but in recent years it’s become a destination for fisherman on the hunt for giant muskie and walleye. It’s a place to swim, to make a boat go fast enough to pull a tube full of squealing kids, or just drift along at the whim of a summer breeze.
Sports aren’t just something we do here in Kosciusko County – it’s part of who we are. It’s embedded in our DNA.
Thursday’s torch relay is a reflection of that.
It’s an honor to be a part of this statewide celebration.
I hope you are proud to live in Indiana. It’s a great state. It’s not perfect of course, but it’s home.
And Thursday is our moment to remind the entire state that we here in Kosciusko County are the crowned jewel of this special place in what used to be the vast wilderness of the Northwest Territory.
Latest News
E-Editions
And there is good reason for that.
The torch will begin its day at the Tiger Athletic Complex in Warsaw, which is appropriate and symbolic of not only what sports mean to Kosciusko County, but also to the state as a whole.
Sports matter to us more in Kosciusko County than about anywhere else in the state. Sure, you can find more athletic teams or better individual athletes in the bigger Hoosier cities, but those teams also play before crowds often disguised as empty seats.
Barb Martz will be the first to carry it. Martz is a Warsaw Community High School grad who was a member of the 1991 girls basketball state runner-up team. She has stayed here in her hometown to become an outstanding teacher and coach and give back to her community.
She will take a lap around the newly lined track surface at the TAC holding the torch, which has a camera built into it. As each torch bearer carries the torch on its journey, they can click a button that will take a picture of the scenery around it and the entourage that is traveling with it. Organizers then download those pictures for people following the torch around the state via the internet to see.
Martz will then hand off the torch to Jeff Shriver, the now co-head coach of the Tippecanoe Valley football team. He will be carrying the torch in memory of his longtime friend and colleague Scott Bibler, just days before the first anniversary of the plane crash that took his life and the lives of three others. Shriver will take the torch through a tunnel of current Tippecanoe Valley football players out the gate of the complex and out Tiger Lane, where he will hand it to Rita Price.
Price, who will go down as one of the state’s most decorated broadcasters and the most decorated female broadcaster ever, will take the torch for a ride in a convertible north on Ind. 15. She is a pioneer in broadcasting, becoming a woman behind the microphone of high school sporting events when that job was exclusively performed by men.
The torch will then travel up Ind. 15, hang a right in Leesburg and move east on CR 500N (Armstrong Road), through Oswego and north into North Webster before spending the afternoon and evening in Syracuse.
The local committee has done a great job of selecting people who represent us to carry the torch, and it will pass by places and things that “are” Kosciusko County.
Sports has so much to do with our history. While basketball’s birth place is Springfield Massachusetts, the cradle of civilization for girls basketball is here. The Warsaw Lady Tiger team of 1975-76 showed us all what can be done and blew away all the existing stereotypes about girls and sports. Judy Warren was the first Miss Basketball, and Shanna Zolman left Wawasee for Knoxville, Tenn., after scoring more points than any girl ever had at that time.
This county is home to 120 lakes, some of which will bear the fleeting reflection of the Bicentennial Torch as it passes by Thursday. It’s always been a great place to catch pan fish, but in recent years it’s become a destination for fisherman on the hunt for giant muskie and walleye. It’s a place to swim, to make a boat go fast enough to pull a tube full of squealing kids, or just drift along at the whim of a summer breeze.
Sports aren’t just something we do here in Kosciusko County – it’s part of who we are. It’s embedded in our DNA.
Thursday’s torch relay is a reflection of that.
It’s an honor to be a part of this statewide celebration.
I hope you are proud to live in Indiana. It’s a great state. It’s not perfect of course, but it’s home.
And Thursday is our moment to remind the entire state that we here in Kosciusko County are the crowned jewel of this special place in what used to be the vast wilderness of the Northwest Territory.
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092