Just what is Hoosier Hysteria?
The road to Bankers Life Fieldhouse and an Indiana state basketball championship started a week ago with the sectional round and now moves to the regional on Saturday.
Over the past 111 years, Indiana High School Basketball has seen its share of standout players, exceptional coaches, upsets, and last-second shots.
After 87 years, the Indiana High School Athletic Association put on a four-class tournament in 1998 and — despite various proposals through the years — has kept the format ever since.
But what exactly is “Hoosier Hysteria?”
“It is hard to explain to someone who is not a part of Hoosier Hysteria what it truly is,” explained Laville head basketball coach Michael Edison. “Growing up in Indiana and being a part of it for my entire life has been quite the experience. I have very vivid memories of when I was younger going to tournament games with my dad and experiencing the excitement first hand. If a person loves the game of basketball it is a time when some of the greatest moments can be experienced firsthand. I have so many exhilarating memories in my head from basketball. Moments that no one can ever take from me.”
“Hoosier Hysteria is one of the few things that unites us,” said WHME Sports Director Chuck Freeby. “The buzz created by the state tournament is still palpable. Small towns and large communities get as excited about what may happen, as what does. And for the teams that make it to Friday night semifinals that’s the best night of the tournament. Four sets of fans coming to a gym, and rooting for their teams, or against their rivals, or seeing that player they’ve heard about all year.”
“It’s the squeak of the sneakers, and the sound the net makes on a swish,” continued Freeby. “It’s the run out of the locker room and the roar of the cheer block. It’s the smell of fresh popcorn and the sight of a great pass that leads to a layup. That’s Hoosier Hysteria.”
Perhaps the most famous coach in all of basketball – Martinsville, Indiana’s own John Wooden – played and coached in the Indiana state basketball tournament. His Martinsville high school team appeared in three state championship games, winning in 1927. After a brief coaching stint in Dayton, Kentucky, Wooden coached
South Bend Central High School for nine years. His high school coaching record? A staggering 218-42.
“Although the word “hysteria” is often thought of in a negative manner, the dictionary describes it as ‘uncontrollable excitement in a group of people’,” said Steve Cox, a Laville High School graduate and current junior varsity girls basketball coach for Laville Lady Hoops. “That is Indiana basketball.”
“I remember as a kid in the 60’s how the local grocery store in downtown Lapaz (Annis IGA) would post the entire bracket of the state tournament by the meat counter and update it weekly,” continued Cox. “My father (Dale Cox) was a board member of the IHSAA. I remember the excitement of getting VIP seats at half court of the state finals in Market Square Arena. I have been to the gymnasium where ‘Hoosiers’ was filmed. When I drive by a home with an outdoor hoop I see Jimmy Chitwood (from the movie) shooting baskets with a half-deflated basketball. That is Indiana basketball. That is Hoosier Hysteria. It’s the best.”
“To me Hoosier Hysteria means memories,” said Earl Mishler, who is a local Indiana high school basketball historian known for his website http://etpearl.homestead.com/welcome.html “It’s me with my ear pressed against my Grandpa’s old radio listening to South Bend Central nip Terre Haute Gerstmeyer for the 1953 state title. It’s all the kids in our Culver neighborhood gathered around the only TV in the area to watch the finals. It’s Scotty Skiles’ shot and Bill O’dell’s tip-in but it’s also the upsets on opening night of the sectionals. It’s undefeated powerhouses clashing in Butler Fieldhouse but it’s also Tippecanoe and West High battling in the sectional in old Centennial Gym in Plymouth.”
“I grew up in Pennsylvania,” said Angelo Di Carlo, sports director at Redeemer Radio (95.7 FM) and former sports director at WNDU TV-16. “High school basketball was important but it’s nothing like in Indiana. When I arrived in South Bend in 2007, I was blessed that my very first week on the job was the week of the boys basketball state finals. My first interview on my first day? With the legendary Jack Edison at Plymouth. That week, I spoke with people at coffee shops in both Plymouth and Hamlet and you could feel the incredible love they had for high school basketball. Sure the Plymouth faithful pointed out it wasn’t like it was in 1982 before ‘class’ basketball but hey this was still incredible for me. Then I got to cover the state championship games that Saturday and saw both Oregon-davis win in 1A and Plymouth win in 3A. The atmosphere for both were awesome. I loved every second of it. It was a great introduction for me to Hoosier Hysteria and well, Hoosier Hysteria has now been a key part of my life for 14 years and counting.”
“There’s nothing quite like sectional semifinal night and the regional semifinals,” continued Di Carlo. “I just love the second half of that first game when fans from all four teams are in the gym and that first game is coming down to the wire. Packed house at North Side Gym or Michigan City. It gives me goosebumps thinking of all the great memories I’ve had over the years covering these games.”
The first game played in Indiana was in Crawfordsville, between two local YMCA teams, the other being from Lafayette. This was the first game of basketball in which the basket was made of a metal ring, rather than a peach basket.
It was easy to practice on your own, and not very time consuming, which was important for farmers in rural Indiana. The rules were simple, so the game was easy to understand, and it was fun to watch.
Over time the obsession with spectating the sport grew, and thus an obsession with winning. The high school state tournament finals, which were housed in a 15,000 seat on Butler’s campus, sold out for 60 years straight after it first began in 1928.
The inventor of the sport, James Naismith, is quoted as saying, “Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana.”
Hoosiers recall Milan’s 1954 championship, but well before Milan other small schools made their mark on Indiana basketball. The tournament also gave us players like Johnny Wilson and Bill Garrett, who used basketball to overcome racial barriers and help pave the way for others. And it served as a unifying force both at the state level and in small towns across Indiana, creating a shared interest and passion for basketball among Hoosiers.
“I think Hoosier Hysteria is the fact that basically every school in Indiana has a basketball team, and plays in the state tournament,” said Laville varsity assistant coach Jason Breden. “Therefore, all schools are interested due to their involvement. Not all schools have sports like football or soccer. Indiana has a rich basketball history, and even with class basketball, it is common for sectional/ regional games to have fully packed gyms. Every year it is also common for upsets to occur in tournament play, where in other sports upsets aren’t as likely to happen.”
There have been nine hosts to the IHSAA state basketball championships. The first state title game was held at Assembly Hall on the campus of Indiana University, Bloomington in 1911 to the present day Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
Longtime Plymouth head coach and current Laville assistant Jack Edison reminisced with this perspective: “The passion for Indiana basketball or “Hoosier Hysteria” goes back as far as I can remember watching, which was about 1950 when I was five. Why the players and the excessive number of fans get so much more excited about basketball in Indiana than any other state, I am not really sure. But it certainly may stem from the fact that for many years there were only two states in the country that did not have class basketball – Indiana and Kentucky – then for several years, it was only Indiana.
“To give an example of the impact of the one class system, as I grew up, your sectional was made up of as many as 16 teams,” continued the 1982 state championship coach. “Every school was of close proximity and, of course, many fierce rivalries. As much excitement as there was during the regular season, it was off the charts during tournament time. It was a really neat atmosphere in my first several years coaching at Plymouth. Since we had the largest enrollment, there would be 3/4 of the fans in the packed-out gym rooting for our opponent no matter who it was. And it was this same scenario across the state. Then after the sectional and the tournament progressed, people were focused on just one tournament again often rooting for the smaller school (the underdog) either at the game or like most of us from our living room at home and you would remember the winning team and some of the players for years afterward often teams and players you had never heard of before. I think it has been and still is the fan excitement that has made it so special.”