Picking Up The Discussion Of Best Tiger Teams
April 4, 2020 at 11:46 a.m.
Picking Up The Discussion Of Best Tiger Teams
By Roger Grossman-
It’s daunting because there are so many teams worth mentioning, and because if you don’t mention a team that someone thinks should be mentioned, you open the door for trouble.
Last weekend, I wrote about the teams you probably remember best: the girls’ basketball state champions of 1976 and 1978, the “Roar of ‘84” and the football team of 2001.
I want to offer you five more teams to reflect on as we take this stroll down memory lane, again, in no particular order.
Football 1964: In the fall of 1964, the Warsaw football team plowed through all 10 of their opponents with very little resistance.
They pushed past Wabash in the season opener 22-19, and then went on to smoke everyone else on their schedule. They pitched five shutouts on their way to a perfect 10-0 season, allowing more than 10 points in a game only three times and 71 total points that season.
The ’64 team was one of four Tiger football teams to go unblemished for an entire regular season.
Football 1952: Twelve years earlier, first-year coach Frank Sanders took over for the man whose name is on the field at Warsaw, George Fisher, and led the Tigers to an unbeaten 9-0 record.
Unlike the 1964 team, the ’52 Tigers played four games that were decided by one score—including the last two in wins of 13-7 over Auburn and Columbia City.
For the record, the other unbeaten team played went 8-0 under Fisher in 1942 (we mentioned 2001 last week).
Girls’ basketball 1989-91: I grouped these three teams together because the core of the team was the same throughout.
1991 All-Stars Dana Creighton and Liza Reed (along with Angie Johnson who was an all-star in 1990) were, in my opinion, as good a trio as Indiana girls’ basketball had ever seen to that point. They were the beneficiaries of having seen what the girls teams of the first 15 years of competition could do, and they took it to a whole new level.
Those teams went 53-3 over those three regular seasons, and were not only highly ranked in Indiana but had gained national merit as well.
They played for the 1991 state championship and lost to a star-studded Bedford-North Lawrence team in the final.
Girls basketball 2004: In what would be his final season on the bench, Coach Will Wienhorst and his Lady Tigers loaded up their schedule and met almost every expectation, but not without adversity.
As preseason 4A Number 1, they went to Valley and lost to Rebekah Parker and the Vikings to open the season, then lost starting guard Mallory Hepler to a torn ACL the very next night.
In a span of 11 days, this team won the Lady Tiger Tournament, the Hall of Fame Tournament in New Castle and the Northern Lakes Conference Holiday Tournament—that’s seven games in less than two weeks.
They went to Chicago to play two games against high-quality city teams and split those games, then ran the table to 4A’s Final Four.
The Lady Tigers hosted the semi-state in a sold out Tiger Den and beat Valpo in overtime to get to the 4A state title game, led by 2004 Miss Basketball Jaclyn Leininger, Mental Attitude Award winner Michelle DeGeeter and two of the best female athletes the school ever produced in Julie Seiss and Rebekah Reichard.
Boys’ basketball 1981: Al Rhodes took over for Jim Miller in November of 1980, and led the boys’ team to a state finals appearance at Market Square Arena.
Led by the dynamic guard tandem of Ron Brandenburg and Eric Sebo, the Tigers were fun to watch and fundamentally sound. Brandenburg finished ninth in all-time scoring at Warsaw, and his 704 points that season is topped only by Kevin Ault’s 844 (1996) and Jeff Grose’s 726 (1985) in single-season scoring.
The Tigers’ 22 wins marked the first of Rhodes’s eleven 20-win seasons.
I can feel your angst building. You are thinking “hey what about…?”
I told you, there won’t be room to mention all of the great teams. We’re here to chronicle a few of the best…and we will continue to do that next week.
It’s daunting because there are so many teams worth mentioning, and because if you don’t mention a team that someone thinks should be mentioned, you open the door for trouble.
Last weekend, I wrote about the teams you probably remember best: the girls’ basketball state champions of 1976 and 1978, the “Roar of ‘84” and the football team of 2001.
I want to offer you five more teams to reflect on as we take this stroll down memory lane, again, in no particular order.
Football 1964: In the fall of 1964, the Warsaw football team plowed through all 10 of their opponents with very little resistance.
They pushed past Wabash in the season opener 22-19, and then went on to smoke everyone else on their schedule. They pitched five shutouts on their way to a perfect 10-0 season, allowing more than 10 points in a game only three times and 71 total points that season.
The ’64 team was one of four Tiger football teams to go unblemished for an entire regular season.
Football 1952: Twelve years earlier, first-year coach Frank Sanders took over for the man whose name is on the field at Warsaw, George Fisher, and led the Tigers to an unbeaten 9-0 record.
Unlike the 1964 team, the ’52 Tigers played four games that were decided by one score—including the last two in wins of 13-7 over Auburn and Columbia City.
For the record, the other unbeaten team played went 8-0 under Fisher in 1942 (we mentioned 2001 last week).
Girls’ basketball 1989-91: I grouped these three teams together because the core of the team was the same throughout.
1991 All-Stars Dana Creighton and Liza Reed (along with Angie Johnson who was an all-star in 1990) were, in my opinion, as good a trio as Indiana girls’ basketball had ever seen to that point. They were the beneficiaries of having seen what the girls teams of the first 15 years of competition could do, and they took it to a whole new level.
Those teams went 53-3 over those three regular seasons, and were not only highly ranked in Indiana but had gained national merit as well.
They played for the 1991 state championship and lost to a star-studded Bedford-North Lawrence team in the final.
Girls basketball 2004: In what would be his final season on the bench, Coach Will Wienhorst and his Lady Tigers loaded up their schedule and met almost every expectation, but not without adversity.
As preseason 4A Number 1, they went to Valley and lost to Rebekah Parker and the Vikings to open the season, then lost starting guard Mallory Hepler to a torn ACL the very next night.
In a span of 11 days, this team won the Lady Tiger Tournament, the Hall of Fame Tournament in New Castle and the Northern Lakes Conference Holiday Tournament—that’s seven games in less than two weeks.
They went to Chicago to play two games against high-quality city teams and split those games, then ran the table to 4A’s Final Four.
The Lady Tigers hosted the semi-state in a sold out Tiger Den and beat Valpo in overtime to get to the 4A state title game, led by 2004 Miss Basketball Jaclyn Leininger, Mental Attitude Award winner Michelle DeGeeter and two of the best female athletes the school ever produced in Julie Seiss and Rebekah Reichard.
Boys’ basketball 1981: Al Rhodes took over for Jim Miller in November of 1980, and led the boys’ team to a state finals appearance at Market Square Arena.
Led by the dynamic guard tandem of Ron Brandenburg and Eric Sebo, the Tigers were fun to watch and fundamentally sound. Brandenburg finished ninth in all-time scoring at Warsaw, and his 704 points that season is topped only by Kevin Ault’s 844 (1996) and Jeff Grose’s 726 (1985) in single-season scoring.
The Tigers’ 22 wins marked the first of Rhodes’s eleven 20-win seasons.
I can feel your angst building. You are thinking “hey what about…?”
I told you, there won’t be room to mention all of the great teams. We’re here to chronicle a few of the best…and we will continue to do that next week.
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