County Tourney in my experience and beyond

Aannd- I'm back. Some of my favorite childhood and early teen memories are of the Kosciusko Co. basketball tourney time. We ate slept and lived basket ball from the ticket sales rush 'till the cutting down of the nets by the winners on Saturday night. It was cold standing outside in line to get into the old Armory building where all the Warsaw and county games were played . Both exhilarating fun and a miserable lack of comfort made it memorable. Much of the enjoyment depended on the weather and who you happened to be standing near. Ah youth.
Anyway at that particular time -late 1940s into the early '50s when there were 14 small county town basket ball teams our house on Washington St. was pit-stop central during the tourney.We would have a big pot of beef/vegie soup simmering in the deep well cooker that fit down into the top of our old electric stove. This perfumed the house from Tuesday night through Saturday afternoon tourney week. County family -cousins and Uncle Dal and the like would stop in for a quick bowl of soup and crowd relief. It was all very exciting in my "who knows what will happen next "mindset then. The fact that this way of playing basketball and in fact this very venue would fade away soon did not occur to me. The huge picture of a tiger that my dad painted on the wall of the gym would be gone. The place where my future husband was formally introduced to me and the location of so many wonderful events like school dances , proms and festivals-disappeared.
The concessions area where I sweated out the selection of a single cheerleader and got a standing O when I walked out on the floor; indicating that I had won by a vote of the entire student body. Wow ! How could that structure not always be there. It will always be there for me.

Well- enough about me and the essence of the era. Any guy will tell you that the game is the thing. I read that the Indiana High School Athletic Association began it's state tournament is 1911. Of course there were regionals and then the semi-states were played starting 1936. Part of that time Atwood (the Greyhounds) did not have a gym but I heard that back then- in the 30s-. they won the regionals after beating Culver in the sectionals. So they got to go play in the state tourney. What a thrill that must have been . I have to look up who was on that team.

Later Dan Anglin , playing for Atwood,was a stellar player in his younger days. One legendary game with Silver Lake , I was told, a ref called Dan for allegedly stepping on the line. It is still debatable but we will always believe the wrong team won because of that call.

School consolidations started in the 1950s, so just as everyone predicted, nothing was ever the same in Hi School basketball again.