November 2004 The Megaphone Page 4
by Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen
This
will be the first of 6 installments on the '57 Elwood team. I'm scheduling
them to have the "big game" come out around tourney time. I had
fun going through my scrapbook and reliving memories as I wrote it, and I hope
others enjoy those memories too -- and the younger ones realize how much fun we
had way back then.
Jane Ann
Episode I -- The Beginnings
I
first heard of the Anderson Jinx in January, 1952. I was in the 5th grade
then. I had become aware of the importance of high school basketball in
Elwood and indeed in all of Indiana the previous year when Elwood narrowly lost
to Kokomo in the 1951 sectionals. I wasn't quite sure what a sectional
was, only that, whatever it was, winning it was pretty important and Elwood
never had.
Dad had bought season tickets for the 51-52 season. With virtually the
whole team back, the Panthers were expected to be a powerhouse, and when they
annihilated Kokomo early in the season, expectations of fame, glory, and a
sectional championship soared. I remember how much I loved the games back then
-- the Panther Band, the 100-member Booster Club, the cheerleaders in their
pretty red and blue outfits, the excitement when everyone stood up for the
school songs (yes, both schools) and the rivalry of the "two bits four
bits" yells.
But that day in January, I found my family -- my parents and my only brother Vic
-- thoroughly depressed. Long faces, low voices. At first I thought
someone had died, but then I discovered the cause -- the IHSAA had reassigned
Elwood back to the sectional at Anderson.
And I, in my total naivety, chirped in with "Well, we'll just win the
Anderson sectional then!"
My Dad, my Mom, and my brother all gazed at me with the utmost condescension and
pity. My brother slowly cleared his throat and began to explain the Facts
of Basketball Life to this poor child -- "Elwood can't win the sectional at
Anderson."
"Why not?'
"They can't beat Anderson."
"Why not?"
"They never have and they never will."
"But why not?"
"Because they're jinxed." Then came that immortal statement that
was as significant in the early 50's in Madison County as the Apostles' Creed
-- "You can put any five boys in Anderson uniforms and they'll beat
Elwood."
And, sure enough, in the championship game of the sectional at the end of
February, Elwood lost to Anderson.
Perhaps the amazing thing, looking at it from this age of 4-class basketball,
was that Elwood ever thought it should beat Anderson. After all, at that
time Anderson was the second largest high school in the state with 3,500
students, second only to Arsenal Technical HS in Indianapolis with over 5,000
(where I later taught in the 1960's) But there was always hope that David
would indeed beat Goliath in those days. "Hoosier Hysteria" was
always at the sectional level, never the state. It was in the sectional
that the dog-eat-dog frenzy known as Indiana high school basketball really
existed. And the other schools in Madison County had won with the
exception of Frankton and St. Mary's, a small Catholic high school in Anderson
-- and of course Elwood. After Anderson, Elwood was the largest high
school in the county then, but the others -- Alexandria, Summitville, Lapel,
Pendleton, and even Markleville had all won a sectional. Summitville had
even won two regionals (beating Indianapolis Tech en route), and Lapel had once
gone to the State Final Four. But not Elwood. We couldn't beat
Anderson. We were "jinxed."
It was probably my Dad's graduating class, back in 1923, that started the talk
of the Jinx. The Panthers (only they weren't yet called Panthers) that
year were undefeated. Mid-season they had been invited down to Cincinnati
to a "Tri-State Invitational Tourney" which included the best teams
from Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky -- and they won it. The team drew so many
fans that the games couldn't be played in the tiny gym in the basement of the
high school building (what would be known in later years as the "Panther
Den") and instead were played in the Armory on South B Street. Elwood
was rated in the top ten teams of the state.
Then came the Sectional tourney. Elwood drew Markleville first and won
54-7. (A word of explanation about these scores from 1923 -- after each
field goal, a jump ball was held. It was possible for a team to play an
entire game and never have possession of the ball.) Then came the big game
against Anderson also rated in the top ten -- and Elwood was soundly defeated
40-10. It was total. It was ugly. It was humiliating. My
mother told me that as they were leaving the gym she heard someone shout,
"Tri-State Champs can't play marbles."
And it built on itself -- the next year when the team got ready for the tourney,
the litany around town was "If last year's team couldn't beat Anderson, you
know this year's team can't." There were some great teams over the
years. For example, Elwood was Central Indiana Conference champs in 1940,
and in 1951, 1952, and 1954. They went down to Anderson with records of
18-2, 17-3, 16-4.
And so it went, year after year, team after team. At tourney time, the
school dutifully went through the motions with pep sessions, red and blue
streamers on cars, decorations in the store fronts downtown. But always
the same thing -- Elwood couldn't beat Anderson.
There was one time of relief to frustration at Anderson -- we got to be
frustrated at Kokomo for a few years. And there was the strange year when
a sectional tournament was actually held in the Elwood gym except that Elwood
didn't play in it.
That was the year, I'm going to guess around 1948, when Kokomo's gym burned
down. The next largest gym in Howard County seated around 500. So
Kokomo rented the Elwood gym which held about 2,300 then. But Elwood was
still assigned to Anderson. There was so much outcry and ridicule that the
next year the IHSAA transferred Elwood to the Kokomo sectional where they stayed
until 1952.
And that's when I first learned about the Anderson Jinx.
Next: Episode II -- "This Is It in '56."
Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen '59