Classes Still Create Hoosier Hysteria
July 27, 2017
By Rob Kaminski
MHSAA benchmarks editor
This is the fourth part in a series on MHSAA tournament classification, past and present, that will be published over the next two weeks. This series originally ran in this spring's edition of MHSAA benchmarks.
Twenty years ago, Bloomington North High School won the Indiana High School Athletic Association boys basketball championship, defeating Delta 75-54 at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.
The date, March 22, 1997, is at the same time revered and disdained by traditionalists in the state who saw it as the last schoolboy championship game the state would ever host.
That’s how devout the game of basketball, particularly interscholastic basketball, had become in the Hoosier state during the 87 years a state champion – one state champion, to be precise – was crowned.
Following that 1997 season, the IHSAA moved to a four-class system for its roundball tournaments, like so many of its state association counterparts had done years earlier.
It would be shocking to find more than a small percentage of current high school basketball players around the country unfamiliar with the iconic movie Hoosiers, even though the film is now more than 30 years old.
And, the storyline for that blockbuster unfolded more than 30 years prior to its release, when small-town, undermanned Milan High School defeated Muncie Central High School 32-30 in the 1954 IHSAA title game.
Perhaps it’s because of the David vs Goliath notion, or the fame of the movie that replaced Milan with the fictional Hickory and real-life star Bobby Plump with Hollywood hero Jimmy Chitwood, or the simple fact that Indiana had something other states didn’t.
Whatever the reason, plenty of opposition remains to this day to basketball classification in the state.
The fact is, the small rural schools were regularly being beaten handily by the much larger suburban and city schools as the tournament progressed each season.
Small schools also were closing at a rapid rate following the state’s School Reorganization Act in 1959, as students converged on larger, centralized county schools. From 1960 to 2000, the number of schools entering the tournament dropped from 694 to 381, and in 1997 a total of 382 schools and 4,584 athletes began competition at the Sectional level (the first level of the IHSAA Basketball Tournament).
It was at the entry level of the tournament where school administrators felt the pain of the new class system, but not necessarily for the same nostalgic reasons as the fans who either attended or boycotted the tournament.
At the Sectional round of the tournament, the IHSAA was culling just 2 percent of the revenue, with the participating schools splitting the balance. So, when Sectional attendance dropped by 14 percent in that first year of class basketball, many schools realized a financial loss. It was money they had grown to count on in prior years to help fund various aspects of the department.
Schools cumulatively received more than $900,000 from Sectional competition in 1998, but that total was down from more than $1 million in the last year of the single-class tournament.
Yet, the current format provides a great deal more opportunity and realistic chances at championship runs for schools of all enrollments.
To date, 60 additional teams have championship or runner-up trophies on display in school trophy cases around Indiana.
That was the mission in front of then-IHSAA commissioner Bob Gardner (now National Federation executive director) once the board made its decision: to give thousands more student-athletes the opportunity for once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
As any statistician knows, figures can be manipulated to tell any side of a story. Declining attendance in year one of class basketball is such a number.
The truth is tournament attendance had been on a steady downward spiral since its peak of just over 1.5 million in 1962. By the last single-class event in 1997, the total attendance was half that.
The challenge then and today, as it is for all state associations, is to find that delicate balance for those holding onto tradition, those holding onto trophies, and the number of trophies to hand out.
Editor’s Note: Stories from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette in 1998 and from a 2007 issue of Indianapolis Monthly provided facts in this article.
EGR, Hopkins Take Volleyball Match to Football Field for 'Rally on Reeds'
By
Dean Holzwarth
Special for MHSAA.com
August 28, 2024
EAST GRAND RAPIDS – Memorial Field in late August is typically filled with the sounds of football pads smashing against each other and raucous crowds celebrating touchdowns.
Last week, however, a different environment engulfed East Grand Rapids’ football field.
With picturesque Reeds Lake as the backdrop, an outdoor volleyball match between the Pioneers and visiting Hopkins was played on the 50-yard line.
The first-year event was dubbed “Rally on Reeds,” and it turned out to be a special gathering of the East Grand Rapids community.
“It was electric,” first-year Pioneers coach Bruce Hungerford said. “Like a ruckus football game meets a minor league baseball-type environment. It was very cool."
More than 2,000 people attended the match, which ended with EGR sweeping the Vikings 3-0.
It was a spectacle that included a carnival area, a visit from members of the Grand Rapids Rise professional volleyball team, a band and the opportunity to showcase the sport of high school volleyball in a non-traditional setting.
“It was unreal,” EGR junior captain Sadie Devlaeminck said. “It was just so great to see how much the community showed up for the volleyball team and to see the environment that we played in. It was just crazy.”
Hungerford had an idea for an event like this before being hired for the job. He was eager to implement it.
“I had it in my plan to build a community, and host a lot of home games,” Hungerford said. “EGR has an awesome football setup because there’s no track around the football field and it just sits perfectly.
“I had the idea well before the Nebraska (volleyball) game (last season) and mostly because of Grand Haven. They do the Battle of the Boardwalk, so I knew people did it outside for scrimmages and games. With this being my first game coaching, I thought this would be a cool way to try and get these little kids that I’ve coached to come and see it, and it went from there.”
Nearby Aquinas College rented EGR the court, and the nets and stanchions were supplied by Grand Rapids Community College.
While excitement built, the process of putting together the court on the football field proved to be a challenging and time-consuming task.
It took more than seven hours for the court to be constructed with the finishing touches completed at 6:48 p.m., 12 minutes before the start of the match.
“The turf provided a tougher environment because of the squares, and you can’t just slide them in,” Hungerford said. “We had to restart a few times and I thought we were absolutely dead in the water at one point. But we got the lines down, and it wasn’t going anywhere.”
While anxiety surrounded the installation of the court, that was eased when play started.
“I was a little nervous because the court took so long to set up,” Devlaeminck said. “And I thought it was going to be harder than indoors because of all the different elements like the wind. But I knew it was going to be a lot of fun playing with my team in a football stadium.
“It was nice for the football team to come and sit in the student section and show support and cheer us on. I thought it was great.”
Hungerford said the Hopkins’ players and coaches enjoyed it as well.
“I didn’t want them to think that they were coming to our prom,” he said. “We were in constant contact with them, and their principal participated in the dunk tank. We got one of their kids to be interviewed by the media, and it was a fun community connection. They all loved it, and they said it was super cool. They were glad they came.”
Sophomore Kenzee Stanley-Eldred was overwhelmed by the amount of support the Pioneers received.
“We weren’t used to playing in front of very big crowds and don't usually have much of a student section, but a lot of people from our school came for this,” Stanley-Eldred said. “And also just the environment of playing outside on a sport court instead of being in a gym. Being outside feels a lot different.”
Organizers hope to make it an annual event by having different teams each year play against EGR.
For many in attendance, this was their first glimpse of high school volleyball.
“A lot of people that I knew and I talked to after the game said it was the first time ever having anything to do with the sport, so it was really cool that we let them into that,” Stanley-Eldred said. “I think it had a big impact with just how many people showed up and were willing to support one another, especially when it was doing something so new and different.”
Dean Holzwarth has covered primarily high school sports for Grand Rapids-based WOOD-TV for five years after serving at the Grand Rapids Press and MLive for 16 years along with shorter stints at the Ionia Sentinel and WZZM. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties.
PHOTOS (Top) An East Grand Rapids hitter puts the ball past a Hopkins block during last week’s “Rally on Reeds” game one EGR’s football field. (2) A pair of Pioneers work to get their hands on a kill attempt. (3) East Grand Rapids warms up as fans fill the stands. (4) East Grand Rapids and Hopkins players take a photo together wearing their “Rally on Reeds” shirts. (Photos by Kathy Hoffman/Michigan Sports Photo.)