LAFAYETTE — Indiana is the cradle of high school basketball.
While not the first state to introduce the sport, basketball caught like frost on an icy road. A flick of the wrist, two circular hoops, a round orange ball and the hustle and aggression of 10 men and women in uniforms would become the life blood where communities would come together in the 19th state of the United States.
Towns and villages in Indiana tied its identity around its high school basketball, with the IHSAA at one point playing host to 820 teams statewide in 1942 at its height. The Lafayette area hosted 98 different schools at the IHSAA in 1942.
Longtime Lafayette resident Terry Smith, who attended Richland Township and was the state’s leading scorer in 1964 before his school was eventually absorbed into the school known today as Fountain Central in Veedersburg, was one of the stars of his era.
“I grew up in a little town, went to the same school, knew everybody,” said Smith. “You knew their brothers and sisters. You went to games and you saw someone you knew. You modeled yourself after them and tried to shoot your shots like them. You knew everybody.”
What was life before schools were mixed together? Smith shares what Hoosier Hysteria was like during the prime years between the 1940s-70s.
Size of the gym and atmosphere at Richland Township
While Indiana is known for having some of the state’s largest gyms, not everything matched the mystique of Case Arena at Frankfort or the wide entry ways and vast space of Crawley Center at Lafayette Jeff.
For Smith, he remembers a gym in Larwill that fit just over 100 people. But he remembers just how loud it was during the era before class basketball. Games were played on Friday and Saturday nights, and it was packed.
“Pep bands were on one side, and the other side of the gym had people from the opposing schools,” Smith said. “You knew a lot of the kids from the other school. I always thought it was the perfect time to come into town and break into homes because that was where people went. It was to the basketball games but no one was ever robbed.”
A chance to play
Smith reflected upon his time at Richland Township and the pride he felt in representing a small community surrounded by like Lafayette Jeff, which had won 37 IHSAA sectional championships at that point.
And in those days, there were 10 teams in the sectional containing teams near Lafayette.
For Smith, the opportunity to play varsity mattered more than winning.
“For a lot of us, if we had gone to the bigger schools, we would’ve gotten lost,” Smith said. “We would’ve probably been doing other things besides playing basketball because those other athletes were so good. We got a chance to play, and our games were always packed. We didn’t always win, but we played with passion and we played hard.”
Smith went onto play college basketball at Wabash and would later have children that played sports at McCutcheon. He is one of the last remaining remnants from that time in Indiana where Hoosier Hysteria was felt in every corner.
Not every team won a sectional, but seeing if a school like Richland Township could compete was part of the fun. Each school with its unique set of traditions, mascots and fight songs coalescing inside during snowy winters.
It wasn’t just a game. Basketball was both the way local rivalry disputes were decided and the meeting ground where neighbors could talk and be part of a goal that was bigger than themselves by cheering and screaming.
High school was a time Smith looks back on fondly. The memories he made, playing basketball and being a fabric woven into the charm and spirit that was Indiana basketball.
“I was fortunate,” Smith said. “I enjoyed the people, the atmosphere. When looking back, I wouldn’t have traded my experiences, the people I knew for anything.”
Ethan Hanson was a sports reporter for the Journal & Courier in Lafayette.
NOTE: This story is part of a special “America 250” project on the history of Indiana high school basketball by journalists within USA Today Co. at the South Bend Tribune, Journal & Courier (Lafayette), The Star Press (Muncie), The Herald-Times (Bloomington) and The Courier & Press (Evansville). All stories will run on those respective sites between July 6-17, with select stories in printed copies of the paper as well.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Richland Township and the charm of pre-consolidation basketball
Reporting by Ethan Hanson, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Ethan Hanson, Lafayette Journal & Courier | USA TODAY Network
