The Pointers Who Belonged to Us All Written by Rob Hunter
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BAINBRIDGE - The Pointers Who Belonged To Us All Written By Rob Hunter Putnam County, Indiana, is longer than it is broad, sky. Borrowing the words of an Indianapolis News a loose collection of farming communities 30 miles sportswriter, the Bainbridge Pointers belonged to west of Indianapolis with Greencastle as its seat of all of us. Their story included a cast of 16 small local government. A Monon train approaching from high schools that no longer exist, swallowed by the south would enter Putnam County at Clover- consolidation; Bainbridge High School itself, dale and rumble its way north through Putnamville with slightly over 200 students, closed in 1969. and Greencastle until the engineer spied the Tree But it is also the story of a charmed hoops life in of Hope, rising like a sentinel along the main line Putnam County, a two-year period when the eye of just north of Brick Chapel. The next community— the basketball hurricane stretched from Bainbridge first in the vastness of the Tipton Till Plain, where to Cloverdale, and in 1966 included Fillmore and the tracks met Big Walnut Creek—was Bainbridge. Greencastle for good measure. In the late fall of 1965, Bainbridge, Indiana was It was a success story, to be sure. But it wasn’t a community of slightly more than 600 Hoosiers, an isolated success story. It didn’t happen in a with U.S. 36 as its main thoroughfare. It featured, vacuum, for success on the court was no stranger among other enterprises, a grain elevator, a diner, to Bainbridge. Today no fewer than five members a barbershop, a grocery store, a gasoline station . of the Hall of Fame, including Archie Chadd, have . and a high school. The school’s purple-and-gold a Bainbridge connection. Ask fans old enough to athletic teams were called the Pointers, after the remember and they will tell you about Jeff Blue, hunting dog that sniffs out game and points toward the All-Star who went on to play for Butler Uni- it with its nose, often with one front paw raised. versity and the Boston Celtics; the 26-0 regional Their boys’ basketball team—as there were no champs team he starred on in 1959 was gleaned girls’ teams in those pre-Title IX days—were on from a student body of 146. There were a total of the verge of something special, but few people twelve sectional and eleven county tourney cham- besides their young coach knew it. pions in the school’s history, in addition to a cham- His first Pointers team had struggled, man- pion of the 1932 aging only six wins out of twenty starts. But the Wabash Valley Bainbridge B-team emerged as conference Tournament, a champions, and with a few holdovers from the mid-season, in- varsity, 24-year-old Pat Rady knew that good terstate, two- times were likely ahead. He doubted, though, week playoff with that he was experienced enough to do justice a massive field to the task, and considered resigning. “But of teams—125 Principal Glen Steetle, Advisory Board mem- at its zenith— bers Archie Chadd and trustee Jewell Blue second only to all expressed their confidence in the young the state tourna- coach, as did members of the team.” So Rady ment itself. (That agreed to stay. “I spent that summer talking to particular club coaches,” he recalls. “I talked to coaches who played through had won the State. I asked them how they got the grief they felt their teams ready for the tournament. Not so over the untimely much X’s and O’s, but how they handled their Bainbridge made the News! death of a team- kids.” Thus, a foundation had been laid for one of mate named Lyman the most successful coaching careers in the state. Boohr.) The successes sprang from the environ- What emerged in the next two years was like ment, nourished and encouraged by the citizens the proverbial comet streaking across the night of the town and the people of Monroe Township. 36 Their coaching ranks included not only Pat Rady ter Fred Cox stood tallest at 6’6”—but they were but also Elbert Allen, L.F. Lonsbury (of the Wa- fast and smart. And they were tenacious. In the bash Valley champions), Frank Pruitt, Dick Cum- words of their coach, retired now after 51 seasons mins, Ed Longfellow (of the unbeaten 1959 re- coaching at six Indiana high schools, “We started gional champs), and Kurt Grass, to name a few. pressing (1-2-1-1, full court) as soon as we got off Their fans knew and appreciated heads-up play. the bus.” The other team either broke the press In a way that’s increasingly rare today, even in the repeatedly or they did not. Most often they did not. state of Indiana, Bainbridge had a love affair with Take, for example, the 1967 sectional semifinal the game of basketball. game versus North Salem, reported by the Green- That love came to full flower repeatedly, and it castle Banner-Graphic: “Larry Steele was the big happened again in the late fall of 1965. It was a man in the first quarter for the Pointers as, taking period captured in grainy black-and-white home his favorite shot from along the side line, he con- movies, a time when neckties were stylishly thin, nected for 12 points.… Ron Rossok, working well eyeglasses were either tortoise-shell or black under the bucket, chipped in with 9.” The press horn-rimmed, and young ladies wore bouffant produced an 8-1 lead that became a 27-11 score hairdos, stiff with hairspray. Hair length among the at the end of the first quarter. Bainbridge won players was still above the ears, crew cuts and flat going away, 111-47. tops. Telephone party lines were common. The A lot of points, you say? Yes, even by Bainbridge war in Vietnam was escalating, and seniors everywhere wondered how world events would affect them after graduation. But the gymnasiums were packed with fans, friends, and fam- ily; the air smelled of sweat and pop- corn, and hoop dreams were alive. At game’s end Bainbridge fans flocked to the Bon-Ton Diner (where challeng- er-seeking wrestler Gorgeous George once made an appearance) for ham- burgers, chili, and cherry Cokes, then rehashed the action next morning at McCall’s Barber Shop, where players got free haircuts—provided the team had won. Like most small schools, the gym at Bainbridge had no bal- cony. It featured a large, wooden cut- out of Clem, the pointer dog mascot, high along standards. But their two-year average was slightly the wall to one side of the stage, where kids sat over 87 points per game—20 more than the 1959 cross-legged at the edge and the pep band beat outfit—with a single game high of 123. If you gave out popular tunes while the teams warmed up. It the Pointers an opportunity to score, they usually was crowded and loud, even when the home team obliged. But effort was the key for Coach Rady. struggled. (“There was very little parking at the “I don’t look at the score,” he says. “I look at the school,” former player Jim Hanks remembers, “so effort. And, boy, you better be giving us some people parked on the streets in town. The streets effort.” The Pointers seldom let him down. “We were packed with cars.”) But November 1965 always worked harder in practice than we had to ushered in a new season, and the next two years in games,” Norm Steele remarks. “Coach always would be very different. said that if we could survive the practice the games The Pointers posted consecutive records of 23-3 would be easy. We were a fast-breaking team in 1966 and ‘67. They lost six players to graduation and I believe we wore most of our opponents out. in 1966, twice as many as Milan lost in 1953. And Our main offense was fast breaks.” they did more than rebuild. They reloaded. The And the North Salem game was typical not only players were not especially tall—freshman cen- in its frenetic rhythm and prodigious point total, but 37 also in the level of competition the Pointers faced. Struggling always to maintain tournament bal- “Bainbridge’s disadvantage is in not playing a ance, the IHSAA assigned the two Putnam County major league schedule,” wrote Dale Burgess of the rivals to separate sectionals. Bainbridge was as- Associated Press in 1959. Like everyone else, signed to Greencastle, it played other small schools nearby, such as while Cloverdale—sand- Russellville and Roachdale, two archrivals from wiched between U.S.40 the northern part of the county and members of and SR42—went to Bra- the Big Four Conference (which drew its name zil. Fine. Then they’d play from the four member counties). Though well- each other in the regional, known to bigger schools—it made a believer right? Not exactly. The out of East Chicago’s John Baratto, who drove winner at Brazil went to 160 miles to Montezuma to watch the Point- Terre Haute; the winner at ers play a road game in ’67—Bainbridge never Greencastle to Covington, over-scheduled, even failed to get sectional the same place the Point- host Greencastle onto their schedule. “We ers won their tried,” Rady explains, “but Greencastle would first regional not schedule county teams at that time.” Not in ’59. Semi- that it mattered: Bainbridge took a first-round state, then? victory (93-71) over the Tiger Cubs in 1966 and Nope.