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BOURBON - Now Triton can build its new trophy case.
After Triton's girls basketball team won the 2000 Class A state finals and brought home the big trophy, there was talk last year of rebuilding the trophy case.
It never happened, for good reason.
"A couple of us," Triton principal Ted Chittum said, "very quietly decided then we better wait until next year."
The decision to wait paid off as Triton now has its second Class A trophy in two years after beating White River Valley. Triton, ranked No. 1, ran over No. 2 White River Valley 55-38 in Saturday's Class A state finals at Conseco Fieldhouse.
The Trojans, 23-3, roared out to a 16-0 lead en route to the 17-point win over the 22-6 Wolverines.
The team returned home Sunday afternoon. Fire trucks escorted the Triton bus through the communities of Tippecanoe, Etna Green and Bourbon. The horns and sirens announced the players' presence in Bourbon long before their bus pulled into the high school parking lot for Sunday's pep session. As the bus pulled up, girls stuck their hands outside the windows and waved at loyal fans who waited outside to greet them despite the overcast day and chilly weather.
While most fans clapped and hooted and hollered, a couple of them held up a white bedsheet that read "Welcome home state champs" in big blue letters.
As the girls climbed off the bus, TV cameras zeroed in on them, as they would for much of the afternoon. At the pep session, all the girls and coaches donned long-sleeve state champion shirts and wore their blue ribbons holding their medals around their necks.
The girls laughed, they hugged, and they dabbed at their eyes with tissues as they cried. The eight seniors on the team realized this was it, the end.
The girls gave speeches at the microphone, some alone, while others came in groups of three or four.
All the while, the big state trophy laid on a small table in front of them for all to see.
"We will bring a jar around so you can participate in building the new trophy case," Chittum said. He wasn't joking, and soon an empty water cooler passing up and down the stands was being stuffed with bills by some of the 1,000-plus fans at the pep session.
The Trojans had won their second title; people sitting in the stands were more than happy to help provide for a new trophy case.
The state titles have galvanized the previously divided communities of Bourbon, Etna Green and Tippecanoe.
"Thursday when we were leaving I saw a little sign on U.S. 331," Chittum said. "It said, 'Three communities, one team.' That little sign epitomizes Triton now compared to when I was here in the 1980s. These girls have done something it would have taken politicians or school officials a lifetime to do."
