I got a chance to go home last weekend.
No, not my humble ranch-style home in the southeastern suburbs of Winona Lake—back to Argos.
Argos High School is celebrating 60 years of soccer this fall.
If you have lived in Northern Indiana for long, you know that Argos is the birthplace of soccer in the state of Indiana. In 1963, Argos basketball coach Ralph Powell was looking for a way to get his players in shape for their upcoming season without just sending them out to run.
Football wasn’t the answer, so he turned to a sport that he’d been exposed to in the military—soccer.
In 1963 none of the guys in Argos had ever played soccer before. Heck, none of them had ever seen it before.
No school in the state of Indiana was playing it until that fall when Argos became the first public school in the state to add soccer to its athletic offerings.
That same fall, a private school down the road from them—Culver Military Academy—also started playing soccer.
The rivalry was born.
If you think of it, the miracle that is Argos soccer screams to be a 2 hour documentary or a 30-for-30 on ESPN.
Out of the cornfields and soybean fields of Indiana rose up a powerhouse that has won almost 700 games in those 60 seasons. And in those early years, they only played 4 of 5 games a season until they found more teams to play, and they didn’t win many of the games they played.
Every kid at every school, public or private, that plays soccer today owes those pioneers of the game a debt of gratitude for clearing the path so many people have taken.
But that’s only a part of the story I want to share with you today.
As I drove into town from the east on Indiana 10, so much of it looked the same as it has for my entire 55 years of living on this earth. Sure, the names on the store fronts have changed, the library was taken down for the new police station building and Ken’s Barber Shop is now something totally different.
But those old, two-story houses up and down Michigan Street—you know, the ones with the big front porches and even bigger front windows—are all still there and still look so beautiful.
The school has some new wrinkles to it, but it’s still the same building in the same footprint that it always has been, and I took a minute to stand it that spot in the hallway near the Weybright Gymnasium entrance where you can look to your right and see the middle school classrooms and a few classes of the elementary wings, then look to your left and see the high school classrooms.
All three levels in one structure, all visible from that one place.
I took part in a celebration of those six decades on Saturday. The current Dragon team played a game against Oak Hill, and then there was an hour-long reception afterward.
It was good to see old friends and catchup with them on where life had taken them.
It was good to be in the school building again.
It was good to walk down the high school hallway and say, “that was Mr. Alcorn’s computer classroom and that was Mrs. Miller’s English room. Here’s where Mr. Miller taught art, that’s where Mrs. Heishman taught us about public speaking, and down here is where Mr. Cooper and Mr. Redinger taught us science.”
The funny thing about what I experienced Saturday in that walk down memory lane is that, while my tiny hometown has changed over the years, the feeling in Argos is still the same.
The names of the families who live there and own businesses there and whose kids got to school there have changed. But the feeling that you get when you go there is still the same. It’s a feeling of hospitality. It’s a place that is doing things quietly but is definitely doing things.
Many people have come there and predicted its downfall. “It’s too small to survive,” they said. “There isn’t enough money to entice people to move here,” others said.
May I suggest to you that what makes small towns great is that they never lose track of who they are or what they are. Argos, and towns like her, never try to seem bigger to impress outsiders. They stay true to their core values, and the people who live there appreciate it.
Maybe you went to a small school or lived in a small town—embrace that!
Small town people care. Small town people work hard and play hard and love with the same passion.
“You can’t go home again” is an adage from the title of a 1940 Thomas Wolfe novel, and I’m just not buying it. You can, and you should. Even if it’s just to visit and remember.
America is held together by the thread of communities like Argos, and the evidence of that is a 60-year legacy of excellence born amongst the corn fields of southern Marshall County Indiana in 1963—a legacy that embraced a sport that no one knew and turned it into a heritage for generations to come.
I know…because that legacy was passed to me 40 years ago this month when I played my first varsity soccer match in Argos Dragon old gold and black, and I have gladly passed it on to others just the same.