Hoosier Hysteria - A ’67 Griffith Panther Memoir

After finishing the regular season with 17 wins and three losses it was time for the state tournament. In Indiana in 1967 there were no classes based on school size. So for the state tournament, which started with the sectionals, it was luck of the draw as to which schools were paired to compete. This often resulted in big schools crushing the smaller schools. That’s why we had never won our sectional and advanced to the regionals. We would always get beat by the bigger Gary and Hammond schools. But this year they had re-configured the sectional pairings and we drew Hanover Central, a small rural school not far from us. This should have been an easy win for us but the state tournament jitters set in and we struggled with this scrappy team. I started the game but didn’t play well with a bad case of the tournament jitters. My replacement, Mike, played pretty well. We managed to win but this was surely one of our worse games of the year. And there was some concern that this might shake our confidence going up against Crown Point in the sectional semi final. In fact Crown Point had recently beat us, breaking our eleven game winning streak. But coach reassured the team that they’d just barely beat us and we had beaten them handily earlier in the year. Coach was confident we would avenge our loss. My tournament jitters earned my replacement, Mike, the start against Crown Point. Mike played very well against Crown Point and I played OK as a reserve but not quite good enough to earn back my starting role. This turned out to be unfortunate for me but more on that later. Our team came out like gang-busters against Crown Point, having shaken the tourney jitters from the 1st game. We played a near perfect 1st half with only one turn-over. We dominated on offense, defense and in rebounding and had a commanding twenty-seven point lead at half. We went on and cruised to a sixteen point win advancing to the sectional final game against Merrilville. The victory over Crown Point left us beating that 9th ranked team 2 out of 3 times that year. Although we never were ranked in the top 10, we clearly were right there, knocking on the door Our coach never had a team as good as we were and I’m not sure he quite knew what to do with us – but more on that later. After Crown Point the sectional final game against Merrillville was almost a foregone conclusion. We coasted to a 15 point victory to seal the first ever sectional championship in the history of our High School. I didn’t start, played a fair amount and did OK but again not that great. The parade of cars back to our gym for a pep rally following the sectional was legendary. A string of cars almost two miles long paraded from Crown Point to Griffith. The gym was packed and coach had our team seated down at mid-court. He introduced every member of the varsity team and called our parents down to the court. He then mentioned a few things about each player. Coach commented on my speed as I raced down the court filling the lanes on fast breaks. He also said the players called me rabbit because I could jump so high. Coach talked about Pete’s great shot and how Marty and I were a couple of the best rebounders Griffith ever had. Coach said Marty was his ‘paint man’ on offense and defense, a tremendous rebounder and shot blocker extraordinaire. He also said that Lenny was an outstanding point guard, team leader and a player that had no quit. And of course he talked about our scoring machine – Kerry. Unfortunately we drew Gary Roosevelt in the first pairings of the regional. Gary Roosevelt had an enrollment of 2000 students compared to our 600 and had consistently been ranked in the top 5 state schools all year. Gary Roosevelt’s front line averaged 6’5” compared to our 6’2”. I was 5’11”. The score was similarly unbalanced with Roosevelt winning by over 20 points. This concluded a Cinderella season for the 1967 Griffith hoopsters with a final record of 20 and 4 and our first ever sectional championship in the Indiana State High School tournament.. We made basketball history at Griffith that year to be sure. Our high school gave the whole school a day off to celebrate. I’ll never forget in my history class our teacher had the basketball players in his class stand up. He commenced to say how we had made basketball history for Griffith by winning the first ever sectional championship. As me and another player stood he looked at us and told the whole class that it was one thing to study history, but another to make history and all the basketball players had just earned an A in his class. He wasn’t kidding - we all got A’s. And do you think any of the other kids complained? Not one word. It was almost like we were Gods – the way we were treated with everyone slapping us on the backs, congratulating us and even hugs from many of the girls. We ate it up as we basked in the glory we had earned through thousands of hours on the basketball courts. This was a dream of a lifetime – a dream come true. Our 1967 Griffith Panther basketball team lead our whole town of Griffith on a beautiful ride through Hoosier hysteria at its very best. As for me and my team-mates we were dead in the middle of all of that and we loved and cherished every minute of it. We had put in so much time and effort on the basketball courts to make this happen. But, make no mistake, it was a labor of love. Very few people ever live their dreams but we sure did – a dream comes true for everyone of us. And we were honored to have been able to do this - for the ‘love of the game’… _____