April 2005                                                         The Megaphone                                                        Page 4

The Anderson Jinx -- Episode VI

by Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen

I hope you have enjoyed reliving those "thrilling days of yesteryear" as much as I have in writing this series. I felt some sort of summarization was necessary to bring it to a close.

Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen '59

Episode VI -- Retrospect

So the 1957 season ended and we went back to our studies. But it was different. In the back of our minds was the realization that we had indeed done it; we had beaten Anderson. 

Dad ran into Willkie High principle M. A. "Mac" Copeland that spring as school was letting out and asked how hard it had been to get students back to schoolwork after the tourney uproar. Surprisingly, the answer was not hard at all. That spring after the tourney victories, attendance and grades had both been high and discipline problems had been low. Mac said it was one of the most enjoyable semesters he had ever spent in all his years of teaching.

It seemed to me while growing up that spring officially came the week after the state tourney. In Elwood, "The Season" had finally ended with the defeat in the regional championship, and slowly life returned to somewhat normal. Attucks roared through the Indianapolis Semi-state the next week, and headed into the State Finals hoping to be the first team since the Franklin Wonder Five of 1920-22 to win three straight championships. They defeated the perennial finalist but never champion Black Cats of Terre Haute Gerstmeyer in the afternoon of the finals and then ran into the undefeated Bears of South Bend Central. South Bend prevailed to become not only the second team, but the second in a row, to win the State undefeated. 

It has been almost half a century since that team of boys who refused to not believe carved out their niche in local history. And it is now almost a totally different world.

Of the Final Four that year, only one high school, Lafayette Jefferson, remains in existence. South Bend Central consolidated among several South Bend high schools, Attucks became a junior high school, and Gerstmeyer consolidated with arch rival Garfield to form Terre Haute North. Gerstmeyer's coach, Howard Sharp, became one of the winningest coaches in Indiana history not only  because he was an excellent coach but also because he coached for an incredibly long career. He, and Terre Haute, never won the big prize though.

And perhaps this is the place to do the "Where are they now?" bit.

Carl McNulty coached three more years at Elwood, winning the CIC title all three of those years (the first team to accomplish that feat) and winning another sectional championship in 1960. From Elwood, he moved to LaPorte, later to Warren Central in Marion County, and then to Kokomo. From there I've lost track of him.

Of the Panthers, with two exceptions, others will have to update where these wonderful boys with the great hearts went in life. The two I know of are Dick Mitchell and Darrell McQuitty. Dick Mitchell, a senior on the Sectional Championship team, was named as an alternate to the Indiana All-Star team that year, played for Purdue University, married his high school sweetheart, Karen Dooley, and taught and coached at Anderson Highland. 

Darrell McQuitty, a junior on the Championship team, was named #6 on the Indiana All-Stars in 1958. (Note -- being #6 in those days meant you had received the 6th highest number of votes to be on the team. Starting the week after the  State Finals, the team was announced one per week starting with Mr. Basketball.) Darrell also went to Purdue, also married his high school sweetheart, Anna Mae "Mazie" Rudig, and taught and coached at Elwood. He was named to the Silver Anniversary team in 1983 and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Indiana High School Hall of Fame. His death while this series of memories was running saddened all who knew him.

After the sectional championship and good showing in the regional, hopes were high for more fame and glory in '58. Elwood won the CIC championship and entered the sectional with a 16-4 record. But 1958 was to be the year of the Indians as Anderson topped Elwood in the championship game and then upset Attucks to win the regional. They lost to Muncie Central in the championship game of the Semi-state.

County speculation had been that the days when Anderson dominated the sectional would come to an end with the opening of two new schools, cutting AHS in half. And for awhile it seemed that way as Elwood and Alexandria dominated the sectional. In 1959 Alexandria beat Anderson in the championship game (Elwood was upset by Pendleton in our first game), in 1960 Elwood beat Alex in the finals, and in 1961 Elwood, after beating Anderson the first night, lost to Alex in the title game. (This was one of the most bitter losses Elwood ever experienced. A huge snowstorm the night of the game completely blocked SR 28, so Elwood fans wound up spending the night in the Alex gym -- not exactly where they wanted to be!) 

Those three sectionals, 59, 60, and 61, were played in the Madison Heights gym after the old Anderson Wigwam burned to the ground in November of 1958. The split bracket format was continued throughout that time, although a 12th team was added which did balance the two brackets but also increased the ticket shortage. When the sectional shifted to the new Wigwam the split bracket was dropped. Anderson won the first sectional in its new gym in 1962, but Alexandria came back to win in 1963. So in the first 7 years after the opening of Madison Heights and Highland, Anderson High won only two sectionals.

But then came a very long dry spell for county teams, as the three Anderson schools completely dominated the tourney for over thirty years. Daleville and Alexandria were the only schools to break the county seat monopoly.

Elwood made a great attempt at beating the Indians in 1965 with a 19-1 team rated in the Top Ten all season. They drew Anderson in their first game -- an Anderson team rated just slightly above Elwood. The Indians prevailed in a tightly fought contest. Then in 1967 Elwood  once again changed sectionals. This time they were sent to the Marion sectional -- just in time for Marion to develop into a state powerhouse. Elwood barely lost to Marion in the 67 sectional, thanks to John Mengelt, but from there on neither Elwood nor anyone else in Grant County was able to slow down the Marion juggernauts of the 70's and 80's. But times were changing. A new factor had entered the tourney. 

In the 1958 season, a school no one had ever heard of starting appearing in the state rankings. First they were #20, then #19, then up to #15, until by the time the sectionals started, this unheard-of school was knocking on the Top Ten. And unbelievably this newcomer roared all the way into the Final Four undefeated. The school was Springs Valley, in its first year of existence. The Black Hawks became better known in later years as the alma mater of Larry Bird (although he didn't become really well known until his college career at Indiana State). But Springs Valley  was symbolic of a phenomenon that would transform Hoosier Hysteria -- consolidation. The previous year the Black Hawks had gone to high school at West Baden and French Lick.

In 1957 there were over 750 high schools playing in the tourney; in 25 years that number would be almost halved. Instead of 12 to 16 team sectionals, six-team sectionals became the norm. Gone were all the rural high schools with "Twp" (standing for township) after their names. For example, the entire Fowler sectional of some ten schools consolidated into one high school, Benton Central, roughly the size of Elwood. The truly small school no longer existed except for new private, usually religious, schools. Rural schools were more likely to carry county names with perhaps a directional adjective, such as South Ripley, than the name of a community. The township schools surrounding Indianapolis shed the TWP moniker and, for the most part, adopted "Central" to their township name -- and became huge high schools as suburbia brought a new element into the tourney.

Of the eleven schools that played in the 1957 Anderson sectional, only six are still in existence. St. Mary's Catholic High School closed in the late 1960's with its students going to their local public high school. Summitville consolidated with Fairmount to create Madison-Grant (the two counties the legacy schools were located in). Pendleton and Markleville, plus a lot of suburban Anderson, consolidated into Pendleton Heights, keeping the name Pendleton but also keeping Markleville's mascot, the Arabians.  Madison Heights was closed in one sense, when it was consolidated between Anderson and Highland with Anderson moving into the former MHHS building but retaining the name the Anderson High School Indians, much to the disappointment and anger of Pirate grads.

The two gyms that were so central to my story of this great season no longer stand. Elwood's old gym at 16th and North A was torn down after a nearby fire. Anderson's old Wigwam burned (in my opinion rather mysteriously and fortuitously) in November of 1958.  There had been a great move in Elwood at that time to build a new gym seating 5,000 to get the sectional at Elwood instead of at Anderson. Then suddenly the Anderson gym burned down. When the new Wigwam, seating well over 9,000, was opened in the fall of 1961, even the most die-hard Elwood fan knew Elwood could never build a 10,000 seat gym.

Neither of the high school buildings of Elwood and Anderson are still in existence. Wendell L. Willkie High School was converted to a junior high school when the new Elwood Community High School was opened (and by the way, was there a contest to come up with that name? If you think I'm being a little sarcastic, no -- I'm being a LOT sarcastic. I just don't like that name.) Then, after the new junior high school was opened, the then-empty old Willkie High building also burned to the ground. Both the old Central building and the gym were torn down afterwards. A few years later the old Anderson High School building, also sitting empty, burned down.

And even the old tourney no longer exists, at least not in the same format. Ironically, after consolidation had wiped out most truly small schools, the IHSAA went to a 4-class system -- with a resultant drop in attendance by 67% the first year. In the first year of the 4-class tourney, both the Wigwam and (Butler) Hinkle Fieldhouse sat empty during the sectionals -- as did Muncie's 7,000 seat gym, Richmond's 7,500 gym, and Connersville's 6,000 gym. Whatever the merits of awarding multiple trophies based on school size, the element of the tourney that had sparked Hoosier Hysteria, and this story, the David vs. Goliath, the Milan vs. Muncie Central, the Elwood vs. Anderson, in other words, "the Upset," was gone.

But memories live on, in yellowed scrapbooks, in high school yearbooks with now out of date fashions, in tales told at class reunions, and especially in the hearts of those of us who were privileged to be there the night we did it, the night we beat the Anderson Indians.

And thus died the Anderson Jinx.

              
Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen '59