It’s a hot topic in the state, not just now, but for a number of years — class basketball. Not since Bloomington South defeated Delta 75-54 in 1997 boys basketball state championship has the state of Indiana had a team win a state tournament without teams being split into divisions. Following that championship game, class basketball was instituted, dividing high school teams into four classes, based on school enrollment. While the following year did feature a “Tournament of Champions”, pitting the four class champions against each other, the single-class tournament was gone, but not forgotten. The debate amongst purists and those in favor of class basketball has been raging since the tournament was changed and things to seem to be heating up. On March 29, IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox and state senator Mike Delph announced town hall meetings would take place, allowing communities to come out and voice their opinions on the topic, beginning at Fort Wayne Northrop on April 10. Since then, the meetings have criss-crossed the state, stopping in Plymouth Tuesday and the last of 11 being May 24 at Gary Roosevelt High School. And just like every other area in the state, our area has plenty of opinions on the topic. “I never was in favor of it,” Tippecanoe Valley coach Bill Patrick said about class basketball. “I’d like to go back to one class. I’d do it in a heart beat.” Preparing to coach his 44th season, Patrick, a member of the Indiana Hall of Fame, has fond memories of single-class basketball. “When we went to the Final Four in 1991, I remember people lining up in the school cafeteria at 3:30 (p.m.) and staying there all night to get tickets for the sectional,” he recalled. That sectional was played at Columbia City and featured teams that played for local bragginging rights. It’s that proximity to sectional teams that he seems to miss. “You don’t have the same rivalries, because every few years, the sectional changes,” he said. “In our own sectional, we started to build something with Whitko, Columbia City and ourselves, but then (Whitko and Columbia City) moved out and another one moved in.” Because enrollments of schools are ever changing, Columbia City bumped up from 3A to 4A and Whitko moved from Sectional 21 to Sectional 23, and was replaced by Fairfield. “Tippecanoe Valley against Lakeland draws no interest,” Patrick said. Crowd size and fan interest have been a focal point of the class basketball conversation, as the participants in sectionals are traveling farther to take on schools of similar size. “It’s so spread out,” Warsaw coach Doug Ogle said about playing an hour away in Elkhart’s North Side Gym. “It’s hard enough to drive that far on a weekend, let alone on a Tuesday night.” While Warsaw is making the hour-long trip, the other five schools in the Class 4A Sectional 3 are located in Elkhart County. With the traveling distance and lack of local rivalries, the tournament seems to be drawing smaller crowds. “The popularity and interest is eroding,” Ogle said. “Something needs to be done to get the interest back.” The town hall meetings may be getting a lot of input from communities, but reversing the current format may be tough to do. “There’s either going to have to be a compromise or they’ll have to keep it the way it is,” Triton coach Jason Groves said. Of the area schools, Triton has benefited the most from the class system, winning nine of its 10 sectional titles since the inception of class basketball began, including five of its six regional titles, all three of its semistate crowns and a Class 1A state championship in 2008. “It’s helped our program tremendously,” Groves said.It’s a hot topic in the state, not just now, but for a number of years — class basketball. Not since Bloomington South defeated Delta 75-54 in 1997 boys basketball state championship has the state of Indiana had a team win a state tournament without teams being split into divisions. Following that championship game, class basketball was instituted, dividing high school teams into four classes, based on school enrollment. While the following year did feature a “Tournament of Champions”, pitting the four class champions against each other, the single-class tournament was gone, but not forgotten. The debate amongst purists and those in favor of class basketball has been raging since the tournament was changed and things to seem to be heating up. On March 29, IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox and state senator Mike Delph announced town hall meetings would take place, allowing communities to come out and voice their opinions on the topic, beginning at Fort Wayne Northrop on April 10. Since then, the meetings have criss-crossed the state, stopping in Plymouth Tuesday and the last of 11 being May 24 at Gary Roosevelt High School. And just like every other area in the state, our area has plenty of opinions on the topic. “I never was in favor of it,” Tippecanoe Valley coach Bill Patrick said about class basketball. “I’d like to go back to one class. I’d do it in a heart beat.” Preparing to coach his 44th season, Patrick, a member of the Indiana Hall of Fame, has fond memories of single-class basketball. “When we went to the Final Four in 1991, I remember people lining up in the school cafeteria at 3:30 (p.m.) and staying there all night to get tickets for the sectional,” he recalled. That sectional was played at Columbia City and featured teams that played for local bragginging rights. It’s that proximity to sectional teams that he seems to miss. “You don’t have the same rivalries, because every few years, the sectional changes,” he said. “In our own sectional, we started to build something with Whitko, Columbia City and ourselves, but then (Whitko and Columbia City) moved out and another one moved in.” Because enrollments of schools are ever changing, Columbia City bumped up from 3A to 4A and Whitko moved from Sectional 21 to Sectional 23, and was replaced by Fairfield. “Tippecanoe Valley against Lakeland draws no interest,” Patrick said. Crowd size and fan interest have been a focal point of the class basketball conversation, as the participants in sectionals are traveling farther to take on schools of similar size. “It’s so spread out,” Warsaw coach Doug Ogle said about playing an hour away in Elkhart’s North Side Gym. “It’s hard enough to drive that far on a weekend, let alone on a Tuesday night.” While Warsaw is making the hour-long trip, the other five schools in the Class 4A Sectional 3 are located in Elkhart County. With the traveling distance and lack of local rivalries, the tournament seems to be drawing smaller crowds. “The popularity and interest is eroding,” Ogle said. “Something needs to be done to get the interest back.” The town hall meetings may be getting a lot of input from communities, but reversing the current format may be tough to do. “There’s either going to have to be a compromise or they’ll have to keep it the way it is,” Triton coach Jason Groves said. Of the area schools, Triton has benefited the most from the class system, winning nine of its 10 sectional titles since the inception of class basketball began, including five of its six regional titles, all three of its semistate crowns and a Class 1A state championship in 2008. “It’s helped our program tremendously,” Groves said. Despite his success as a coach, Groves also knows what it’s like to play in the single-class system, having done so at John Glenn High School. “I can see both sides, because I grew up as a kid dreaming of playing against the big school in a sectional championship,” he said. And Groves wouldn’t have been alone in dreaming of downing the bigger school for a sectional title. “In single class, if you won the sectional by beating a big school, it was almost bigger than winning state,” Patrick said. And sometimes those small schools can go much further than a sectional title. The prime example is Milan’s 32-30 win over Muncie Central in the 1954 state championship game, made even more famous by the movie “Hoosiers”. After that game, smaller schools won state, but no one the size of the Bobby Plump-led Milan squad accomplished the feat. According to Patrick, that drought may have led to class basketball. “If we could have gotten a small school to win the title, it may have postponed (the move to class basketball),” Patrick said. Because of class basketball, there may have been a team from a smaller school that could have won state over a larger school, but that thought doesn’t linger too long with Groves. “You do think about what would have happened and how you could have competed against the bigger schools,” Groves said. “But at the same time, the grind would be so tough, because you’d have a two-game regional, a two-game semistate and then the state championship. But I can guarantee you, the players and this community wouldn’t trade that (2008) experience for anything.” Instead of having to trade that experience, there are some alternatives being floated around. Both Ogle and Patrick have a similar idea of how to adjust the tournament, melding the two formats. Ogle’s plan would keep the class format intact for sectional play, leaving 64 teams to play in 16 separate regionals with each class being represented in each regional. From there, it’s single class basketball until one team is left. That one team left would make more than a few people in the state pleased. “I don’t think we have a state champion anymore,” Patrick said. “We have four champions, but not a state champion.” And that state champion may be more memorable than four. “When we had one class, I’d say 80 to 90 percent of the state knew the teams playing the state championship game and knew who the state champion was. Now, it’s down to about 10 percent who knows who won each championship. The only ones that know are the people in the communities.” For the most part, the champion would come from a larger school, but if it did happen to be a small school, it may just grab the attention of the whole state. “You have to be impressed with what the NCAA tournament has,” Ogle said. “It grabs the country’s attention for a month. What they have is the Cinderella story.” Like Groves, Ogle can see both sides of the class basketball, as he currently coaches a 4A team, but played at the smaller Clinton Central. While in high school, Ogle won sectional titles in 1979 and 1980. In the 1980 sectional title, his team knocked off Frankfort, a school he estimates was three to four times larger than his own. Ogle’s team went on to claim the regional title, and his competitiveness still plays into his thought process when it comes to the debate. “I went to a small school with 90 students in the graduating class, but we won two sectionals,” he said. “If my principal had voted for class basketball, which would be telling us we weren’t good enough to beat Frankfort, we would have been upset.” The central issue to class basketball has always been competitive balance, but even with the class system, the balance has been skewed by private schools. “I don’t see how it’s fair that a 1A or 2A school has to take on a Park Tudor or Bowman Academy or (Fort Wayne) Bishop Luers,” Ogle said. In the past five years, Park Tudor has won the past two Class 2A titles, while Luers won n 2009 and 2008. The road to Class 1A championship is also paved with non-public schools. During Triton’s 2008 state title run, they began with a win over Michigan City Marquette Catholic. From there, the Trojans defeated Morgan Township, a public school, in the opening game of the regional, followed by a win over Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian in the regional final. At semistate, Triton down Lafayette Central Catholic then defeated Indianapolis Luthern in the state finals, meaning they had to get through four parochial schools en rout to the crown. “Here, you build from kindergarten and see the boys come up together,” Groves said. “At Bowman Academy or Michigan City Marquette, they may have a different roster each year.” At their most recent meeting, the IHSAA Board of Directors voted 17-0 against a proposal that would separate public and charter schools from private schools in separate tournaments, putting a quick to end to that debate. The private school versus public school debate may be ongoing, but for now, the hotter topic is class basketball. “We had the best system in the United States,” Patrick said about single-class basketball. “Every state wanted what we had.”
