I did something on Saturday I don’t get to do very often – I listened to someone else broadcast a local sporting event.
Rita Price and Tim Keffaber were wedged into a massive throng of human beings at the Class 1A and 2A boys basketball semistate games at Huntington Arena. By their account, there were a few empty seats in the top corner of the Fort Wayne Blackhawk section, but every other seat was spoken for at the 1A north championship. As fans from the first game left, new fans were let in for the 2A game.
Similar stories played out at Lafayette and Seymour, where semistate tickets were as precious as 2016 World Series tickets were to Chicago Cubs fans.
The crowds at Huntington North High School sounded like the constant, rolling thunder that shakes the earth just before a thunderstorm hits – echoing from one direction for a few seconds, briefly pausing, then bouncing back from the other. It was fun to listen to because it was radio you were participating in, even without a cheering interest. And because Rita and Tim are, well, Rita and Tim, they made us all feel like we were there in Huntington with them.
Southwood won the 1A North title and will represent Wabash County in the state championship game Saturday. Oak Hill then made history with their first semistate victory … and it got me thinking.
I starting thinking about how excited these two schools and the small communities that consolidated to form them must be. They were, on that day and each of the days since, experiencing something that they had never experienced before in their lifetimes. It made me reflect on that moment that Bill O’Dell tipped in his own miss to lift Argos past the mighty Marion Giants in the 1979 Fort Wayne Semistate.
And fans of the Knights and Eagles (whose schools are just miles apart) will show up in mass numbers at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis for the state finals on Saturday. It’s true that the size of the communities playing in the day session (1A and 2A) means the attendance is generally lower during that session than in the night session with the bigger schools.
But it would be just as accurate to say that fans in communities like Converse, Mier, Sweetser, Wabash, Morristown and Ferdinand may not fill as many seats as larger schools, but their souls will more than pick up the slack with their enthusiasm.
Part of why this year’s tournament has been such a roaring success is because there are more teams, more schools and more communities that have either rarely been this far or have never before participated. It means more to them. They are why the leadership of the IHSAA switched Indiana over to class basketball more than 20 years ago. It was supposed to give those little public schools from little towns and burgs around the state the opportunity to take a sip from the golden cup.
It was also interesting to see a larger town like New Castle – a once perennial state power under Sam Alford – back in the glow of Hoosier Hysteria this year. The fans there have longed for a winner, and they made it to within two good possessions of being in Indy themselves.
This year has been a great reminder that having a great tradition of winning in a certain sport at a certain school does not guarantee future results. Penn football players, for example, must work to prove themselves each and every year. Their games start at 0-0 on the scoreboard just like everyone else’s, and they know they must earn everything they get.
It may not seem like it, but there is no sports-related organization, no business, no municipality or governmental entity that ever is standing still. You must keep moving forward or you will start slipping backward.
Just because you are from a certain town that has had a history of success in a certain sport over the years does not mean you have a birthright to be great in that sport every year. A school corporation’s patrons cannot demand that its team always win and dominate in glorious fashion because, well, “because we are from (insert name of town here) and this is the way it is!”
No … no it isn’t.
Sports are just too unpredictable. Sports played by teenagers are even more so.
There must not only be talent on a team, but there must also be the right combination of skilled players and athletes, leaders and followers, polished and gritty. And a little luck along the way helps. But, in the end, all must be willing to pay the price required to give the collective group a chance.
Each team, each coach, each player must renew their dedication to improve themselves and their team each and every day. Failure to do so can lead to cracks in the foundation of any great tradition, and cracks get exposed under the pressure of competition over time.
It’s true in sports. It’s true in business. It’s true in life.
To do anything less and expect to continue a tradition “just because it’s always been that way” is foolish. Communities like that of Southwood, Oak Hill and Morristown are savoring this moment in time because they are not slaves to the successes of their school’s pasts. They hoped for this, but there was no expectation of it. To expect constant success leaves those achieving that success not with a feeling of joy in winning, but more a feeling of relief in not losing.
That’s how it is at Carmel. Winning is what Carmel teams must do, and the feeling in school there this week is no-doubt not the same as it is at Southwood.
That’s no way to live your life. It only leads to needless disappointment when things don’t work out.
Demand excellence of yourself and help those around you seek it out and see where it takes you. If you do that, you will find whatever you are doing more enjoyable no matter what the end results.
Remember: life is about the journey and the people you meet along the way, not the destination.
