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.
TC Central Repeats in D1, While Adams & Marquette Celebrate Winners
By
Andrew Rosenthal
Special for Second Half
February 28, 2022
BOYNE FALLS — If Rochester Adams sophomore Katie Fodale was going to win a Division 1 Finals title this year, she didn’t think it would be in slalom.
Last year’s giant slalom runner-up showed off on the other side of the mountain Monday. Fodale won slalom with the only sub 31-second run of the day at Boyne Mountain for her first Finals championship of her early ski career.
“I probably skied like the best slalom of my life today,” Fodale said. “I think I was super aggressive. I was trying to go as fast as I could. I wasn’t worried about falling. I think that’s like a big thing because if you’re going to ski cautiously then it’s just not going to be your fastest. I didn't; I just went as fast as I could.”
Fodale managed to top last year’s slalom runner-up, Traverse City Central senior Elle Craven, after Craven hiked on her first run, but the one damper on the day didn’t seem to hurt the perennial state-contending Trojans much.
Craven medaled in GS with a team-leading fourth-place run, and Central clinched back-to-back team titles after last year’s group won its first since 2013. It was the Trojans’ 13th Finals championship in girls skiing.
“Each one is just as special as the other, for sure,” Central coach Amy Kudary said. “This one is so special to me because we both came into the program at the same time. I started four years ago when this group was freshmen. We’ve all grown together over the last four years. We’ve all changed, grown and gotten better at everything we do.”
Kudary took over for longtime — and successful — Central ski coach Jerry Stanek in 2018-19, and he’s been an assistant with the program since. She also skied for him when the Trojans won the Open Class Finals championship in 1989.
“For him to be back coaching with me now and winning with him is one of the most special things in my mind,” she said.
For the Trojans, senior Maddy Cox went home with twin all-state honors, finishing fifth in GS and sixth in slalom. Avery Sill finished eighth in GS, and Pearl Hale, Sill and Lilly Kuberski all took top-15 spots in slalom.
“It’s bittersweet because it’s coming to an end, but I’m so happy with how I was able to race today and how I was able to help the team,” said Cox, who was all-state in GS as a junior.
Cox joined Charlie Schulz from Traverse City West (10th in slalom, sixth in GS) with two medals. Lila Warren (10th in GS) and Olivia Bageris (seventh in slalom) had all-state finishes for the Titans. Dillyn Mohr and Ellie Gruber were top-15 in slalom. Gruber was 18th in GS.
The Titans, who ended the day runners-up, went into the lunch break with a team lead and landed four in the top 15 for the girls slalom. West has won three Finals championships and now two runner-up trophies.
“For the girls, this is incredibly exciting because they weren't even at this meet last year,” West coach Ed Johnson said. “We just saw at the beginning of the year that there was that much potential with the girls and how they were skiing together and their consistency. We just knew if we could keep building on that throughout the season they could probably get to this point.”
Marquette didn’t make an appearance as a team, but that didn’t stop the lone Upper Peninsula school in Division 1 from bringing a championship back over the Mackinac Bridge.
Senior Maddy Stern landed on the podium twice, winning the GS title and earning all-state in slalom finishing eighth.
“I just was able to stick to it and carve all my turns well,” Stern said. “I could just carry my speed from the steeps to the flats pretty good.”
She and Anna Grezlak represented Marquette at the Girls Finals. Like the two Traverse City schools, Marquette is a rightful ski dynasty of its own, having won five of the last seven Division 1 championships.
“I really wish my team was here to support and so I can support them, but I really am having a great time just showing what Marquette can do,” Stern said. “We did have a tough season this year, but it was a great way to go out.”
She’s off to represent the U.P. some more. In four days, Stern travels to Attitash, New Hampshire to race with USSA Team Michigan.
“I did a lot of training this year just preparing for this day,” Stern said.
PHOTOS (Top) Rochester Adams’ Katie Fodale cuts past a gate during a slalom run Monday at Boyne Mountain. (Middle) Marquette’s Maddy Stern speeds toward the finish of the giant slalom. (Click for more from Sports in Motion.)