Friday night, the last Friday night for high school boys’ basketball games this postseason, the Times-Union readership had six teams in IHSAA boys’ basketball sectional semi-finals. Each had either a clear shot or a puncher’s chance at making and advancing last night and even winning its sectional title tonight.
This field landed at least one team in each enrollment class, to boot.
Triton and Lakeland Christian Academy (Class 1A), Manchester (Class 2A), Tippecanoe Valley, Wawasee (Class 3A), and Warsaw (Class 4A) comprise the aforementioned field. Area basketball fans should not be at a loss for a place to catch a ballgame.
Five years ago, this was the week boys’ high school basketball unknowingly celebrated sectional titles, then quickly shut downplay the following Friday when sectional champs statewide set their sights on regional action.
COVID-19, the Corona virus, was exponentially contributing to the deaths of people gathering in crowded spaces, and some sectionals throughout Indiana had fans in attendance who subsequently contracted and consequently died from the worst plague on this continent in slightly over 100 years.
After a month of schools being closed and e-learning, most of the districts throughout the United States continued the closure of their facilities, and the end of all spring sports seasons. Offices and factories were closing or operating in a shelter-in-place mode, and professional and collegiate sports followed suit with the cancellation of upcoming winter sports postseason tournaments as well as the spring sports season.
I was still commuting to the foundry where I worked even during the initial shutdown because vendors still wanted their money from us, and there was a skeleton crew still on the payroll as opposed to collecting unemployment.
The huge entertainment void left for sports, and recognizing – most days each week – the same cars traveling North and South on Indiana State Road 15 made me think of “King of the World”, one of my favorite songs from my favorite bands, Steely Dan.
It was a time where – even when common sense told me this too will be repaired and pass – the landscape (with its mucky ground, brownish green grass, and mostly bare trees) just made the impact of the pandemic feel pretty hopeless.
I used to listen to “King of the World” and think the only thing bringing this story to life would be several nuclear bombs wiping out chunks of the United States where the song’s tongue-in-cheek narrator starts out calling out from his ham radio to anyone who’s still surviving in a dystopian post-nuclear holocaust world.
The world bounced back though aggressive vaccines, interim crowd size reductions or complete depletions, and entrepreneurial professional sports leagues who found ways to sequester their athletes until the nation was considerably improving its collective health.
The NBA, sequestering its playoff field in Orlando, Florida, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) with its octagon operating in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) are the most notable and successful examples of adapting, and the people responded with viewership.
The NBA turned into the nation’s best summer sport for a moment in 2020.
My trip to Indianapolis last weekend, my satisfying hotel stay, the meals I enjoyed in the Circle City, and watching the Lady Tigers compete for, but not secure, the IHSAA Class 4A state basketball title were still fun and the weekend felt special despite the game’s outcome.
It seems post-pandemic sports losses among the teams I follow and favor the most do not affect me as negatively as they did before COVID-19 disrupted almost all of 2020.
Watch the area teams - regardless of the outcomes this weekend – and appreciate what lay ahead: a highly likely smooth transition from scholastic sports’ winter sports postseason to spring season.
The Indiana high school basketball transition from girls’ to boys’ state tournaments allow cage fans from spending too much time licking their wounds.
The possibility of unwelcome surprises still makes temporary rent free visits in my head, but I battle and beat those thoughts. I hope each of you do, too.