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.
Wolves Lacrosse Growing, Gaining While Providing Opportunities to Play
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
May 5, 2025
Eric Anderson has been sure to make the branding of his lacrosse program more representative of the make-up of his team.
The team is under the supervision of the Bay City Central athletic department, as BCC is the primary school in the cooperative that draws players from four schools total. But while the team also carries BCC’s mascot, the Wolves, their uniforms are black, purple and grey, and their helmets white – with those color choices making “Wolves lacrosse” more a representation of the breakdown of its players: 12 from Bay City Central, 12 from Frankenmuth, two from Freeland and two from Saginaw Swan Valley.
While the players outside of Bay City Central appreciate the gesture, they’re much more appreciative of the opportunity.
“Lacrosse being my favorite sport, I didn’t really have a choice. If there wasn’t a team, I couldn’t play,” Frankenmuth senior Aidan Hubbard said. “With this opportunity, it brings a lot of joy to me, playing the sport I love, and I didn’t have to just quit it because there wasn’t a team.
“I’m going to be honest, (the branding is) not really (important). As long as I’m playing, I don’t care what our team name is. We’re wearing the purple and playing on this field.”
The identity is important to Anderson, who built the team by going the co-op route following the pandemic. His first season as coach was set to be the spring of 2020, but a promising roster of more than 30 players never got to see the field.
By the time he was able to coach a game in 2021, that number was down to 14.
“I reached out to my AD and said that we have to do something different; we need a co-op,” Anderson said. “My son was coming in as a freshman, and I knew we had a couple lacrosse players who are hockey players at Frankenmuth High School. We reached out to Frankenmuth, and Frankenmuth grabbed a hold right away. … Between the parents and myself, we have not had a single issue. Everything has been absolutely seamless. We treat it as one. This is a Bay City Central lacrosse team. Bay City Central pays for it. But our colors are black, purple and grey, even though Central is purple and gold. We refer to it as Wolves lacrosse.”
Anderson’s son, Maveric, attends Bay City Central, and was part of that first co-op team, as were Hubbard and John Britton, who both attend Frankenmuth.
All three are now seniors, along with Frankenmuth’s Caleb Morgan, who joined as a sophomore and is in his third year with the program.
“It’s very unique,” Morgan said. “Because it’s not people you see every day in school. You only get to see these guys this time during the year, so it’s like a very unique experience catching up after the year is over and everybody comes back after a whole year of not seeing each other.”
With that backbone, the team has grown to its current number of 28, nearly to the point where Anderson can create a junior varsity squad.
“The program really wasn’t too much in the past years,” Hubbard said. “Now, it’s kind of like getting a little jumpstart. Even kids over in Frankenmuth, everyone in Frankenmuth is talking about it. It’s kind of hot in Frankenmuth right now. Lots of younger kids are wanting to play.”
It helps that the Wolves are translating those numbers into success.
Heading into tonight, the Wolves are 8-4 on the season and have won eight of their past 10 games.
Not only have they already set a school record for wins, they’re on their way to doubling the number of wins they had (five) over the previous three years combined.
“We have a bunch of younger kid stepping into roles that they’ve never really played before,” Britton said. “I kind of figured that sooner or later we’d get enough kids to put on a lacrosse field and win some games.”
It’s something Anderson could see coming, as the team had been getting more and more competitive. And, despite the fact they were consistently scheduled as a team’s ceremonial Senior Night, they weren’t making it easy for the opposition.
“This group of guys would compete in every single game,” Anderson said. “We would just lose because, in the fourth quarter, we’d run out of gas. We didn’t have enough players. We’ve been everybody’s Senior Night for the last number of years. Last year, we watched all these teams graduating 18 kids, 16 kids, all these kids, and we graduated one. You believe that these kids, they’ve kept receipts.”
Now, Anderson is seeing his senior-led team – there are 13 on the Wolves roster – not only winning more games, but controlling them.
“You know where I see (the improvement), I see it offensively, where we’re finally able to handle the ball, make passes, and control the ball in the offensive zone,” Anderson said. “We’re not always having to be on the run and backtracking. We’re able to get the ball in the zone, maintain an offensive possession and get a quality shot.”
The Wolves already have attained the goals Anderson had set for his team, as they’re competing night in and night out and have shown massive improvement year over year.
For the players, they simply want to keep doing that – and building up the program for which they’ve laid the foundation.
“We’ve kind of just been building,” Hubbard said. “We’ve had our little group, and it’s just been building up and everyone here has stuck it through, so I think we all deserve it. Coaches, too. They stuck it through while we were one of the worst, if not the worst, lacrosse teams in Michigan.”
Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Wolves lacrosse players celebrate a win this season. (Middle) Maveric Anderson (8) pursues a loose ball Saturday against East Kentwood. (Photos by Shae Lauwers/Moments by Shea.)