I had the privilege of covering the Tippecanoe Valley girls basketball game at Rochester Saturday night, and before noon the next day I heard what happened at the Ben Davis vs. Pike game. First, let’s talk about what it was like locally. Rochester was ranked No. 1 in Class 2A, Valley was No. 5 in 3A, and the teams played a great semistate game in front of 5,000 or so people in Warsaw’s Tiger Den during last year’s state tournament. I wish this game could have been played at Warsaw to accommodate all the fans, because it was difficult to find a place to park the ol’ minivan. I seek forgiveness for double-parking, but in my defense I wasn’t the only one. (and Rochester isn’t the only high school where people double park for a game. I can’t think of a place where that doesn’t happen.) As I walked in, fans were holding doors open for each other, regardless of the color of the attire. Going down the hall, I thought “I’ve been to weddings with fewer smiling faces than this place.” The guy selling 50/50 raffle tickets in a Rochester Zebra shirt encouraged a Lady Viking fan to take a chance. “Look at this crowd! This would be the night to win!” Once in the gym, it was hard not to notice the stands. The place was nearly full, and it was in the second quarter of a very one-sided junior varsity game. Still, the cheering was very spirited. I only saw three, maybe four cops in uniform there all night, and I sure didn’t see anyone dressed as a fire marshal. People cheered for their teams hard all night long, and the taunts weren’t crude or nasty. I’d describe them more as “traditional.” More on the cheering in my next column. Toward the end of the game, when a Rochester comeback was clearly not going to happen, the Lady Zebra cheer block started chanting “we’re not ma-ad.” I couldn’t make out what the Valley fans cheered back, but both sides were smiling afterward. Rochester head coach Tony Stesiak summed it up best: “Right now my players care more about the scoreboard; they came up on the short end, and it hurts. But years from now, maybe when they have kids of their own playing in gyms where they don’t roll out all the bleachers, they’ll think about these games and playing in front of a full hose, and really appreciate how special those games really were.” And then there’s Ben Davis and Pike. And I think to myself “I may live on the same planet, but we live in entirely different worlds.” Without going into a lot of redundant detail, an on-court fight between two ranked teams broke out. People left the stands and things got worse. The penalties handed to the schools are exactly as they were for the Griffith-Hammond fight in a boys game late last season. Their seasons are over, no postseason, and probation for the next season. Let’s hope the legal system stays out of it this time, but I’ve got a feeling that even as I’m writing this column, lawsuits are being prepared and filed. Confession time; I’ve been a part of some heated competitions in my life, a select few which nearly came to blows. Heads cooler than mine prevailed, thus saving me a lifetime of embarrassment. It wasn’t long after that I decided slow-pitch softball wasn’t worth the aggravation; if that’s what it was going to be like, I had better things to do with my weekends. So instead of reinforcing my “the IHSAA needs to send a message here,” stance, I’m going to suggest Rochester and Tippecanoe Valley be a big part of that message. Both games had ranked teams playing for an inside track to a conference title, and the bragging rights that go with it. Turns out it’s another case where city slickers could learn a thing or two from country folks.
