It was Saturday, Feb. 7. The Hammond and Griffith boys’ basketball teams were playing in their annual regular season game.
Early in the first quarter, Griffith’s Anthony Murphy went up for a dunk after catching the ball on a fast break. While Murphy was in midair, a Hammond defender shoved him and sent him flying headfirst into the wall.
Within seconds, every player on the court was involved in a fight under the basket.
“Everyone stay in their seats,” the announcer said calmly. “All players return to their seats.”
But it was too late. Players left their benches. Parents from the stands spilled onto the court to intervene. Referees, police officers and school administrators tried to pry players away from one another.
Once the chaos settled and the coaches and athletic directors discussed a temporary solution, the announcer’s voice echoed over the loudspeakers.
“The remainder of tonight’s game is canceled,” he said, “and will be rescheduled.”
But it never was.
***
The fight was one of six to happen in Indiana high school athletics in the past two years, a trend IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox said he wants desperately to end. In the case of Hammond and Griffith, Cox has a situation that could take months, maybe years, to resolve as he attempts to impose sanctions the schools claim are unjust.
On the night of the fight, Cox was attending a different high school basketball game in southern Indiana when he got a call about what happened.
Administrators assembled at the IHSAA office the following Monday to review the video and determine what the penalties should be.
The punishment was the same for both teams. All remaining regular season games — Griffith had six left, Hammond four — were canceled, including all games for the freshman and JV teams. For any away games, the teams were forced to pay a $500 forfeiture fee to each hosting school.
The coaches from both schools were required to complete a Teaching and Modeling Behavior course, and every player completed a sportsmanship course.
The game was ruled a double forfeit. Both basketball teams are on probation for the entire 2015-16 school year.
Finally, Griffith and Hammond were suspended from the state tournament and not allowed to receive any revenue from the sectional.
Cox said it’s not the most severe punishment ever to be issued by the IHSAA but it’s certainly the harshest penalty he’s ever enforced.
The decision is part of the IHSAA’s newly formed sportsmanship task force.
“We need to reward schools that exhibit good sportsmanship, and, at the same time, we need to penalize with a greater harshness those that violate expected sportsmanship,” Cox said. “So we did that.”
The task force was formed about a year ago as a result of a fight during a football game in Indianapolis between Arsenal Technical High School and Fort Wayne South High School. In the third quarter, a Fort Wayne South player tackled a Tech running back out of bounds. Both benches emptied. Players were tackling each other, and coaches threw punches at opposing ?coaches.
Cox also ruled the game a double forfeit and put both teams on probation for the remainder of the season, but they were still allowed to participate in the postseason tournament.
Cox is tired of the violence, and in the Griffith-Hammond case he wanted to make his point loud and clear.
“It is extreme,” Cox said. “I’ll certainly admit to that. But what is it going to take before it’s not extreme? Are we going to have to kill somebody in a gymnasium? And then we all look at each other and wring our hands and say, ‘Gosh we should’ve done something earlier about this.’”
***
The brawl made headlines on ESPN, CNN and Yahoo! Sports, among others. Two months later, the video had more than 450,000 views on YouTube.
An incident that lasted only 45 seconds has come to define two northwest Indiana communities.
To the schools, the punishment issued by the IHSAA didn’t seem fair. The existing rule stated the consequence for one fight was a one-game suspension.
Griffith received more than six times that, and that’s what didn’t make sense to Griffith Athletic Director Stacy Adams.
“It’s pretty much like this: if you’re driving along the highway going 55, the speed limit’s 55, and the cops pull you over and say, ‘Oh, the speed limit now is 35,’ and they’re going to take away your driver’s license and throw you into jail,” Adams said. “They just can’t do that.”
Hammond Athletic Director Larry Moore Sr. felt the IHSAA made a hasty decision without giving the schools a chance to tell their side of the story. The viral video made it look a lot worse than it really was, he said. Only two or three punches were thrown, while the majority of the people on the court acted as peacemakers.
The two schools, together, appealed the decision by the IHSAA.
While they waited for a verdict, the teams weren’t allowed to practice. Each athletic administration issued its own five-day suspension to all student-athletes involved in the fight.
Larry Moore Jr., the Hammond boys’ basketball coach, said his players had completed the sportsmanship course even before the IHSAA had made its initial decision.
Moore Sr. had every coach at Hammond High School also take the course, making sure every coach under his direction knew the unsportsmanlike behavior displayed in the Griffith gym that night wouldn’t be tolerable.
When Moore Sr. took over the athletic department 15 years ago, he strove to change the image of Hammond High School. He taught his players to act like gentlemen, and he wanted other schools to feel as though they could come to Hammond without feeling threatened.
In 45 seconds, that new image disappeared.
The Griffith players were also suspended from school for five days. They couldn’t practice together, but they kept playing. Many of them have memberships to the YMCA, where they’d go after school and practice individually.
They would go to the library and do their best to maintain good grades so if they got a second chance there wouldn’t be anything holding them back.
On March 2 they earned just that — a chance to get back on the court.
The court ruled in favor of the schools and issued a temporary injunction to allow both teams to be reinstated in the state tournament.
Sectionals were just four days away.
***
Before this past season, the Griffith boys’ basketball team had yet to make it past its northwest Indiana regional. They had a mere four sectional titles through 48 years.
This season was different.
When the Panthers were originally suspended, they were ranked No. 10 in Class 3A with a 13-4 record, led by Murphy and his twin brother, Tremell, who scored a combined 32.3 points per game.
After being forced to forfeit its final six games of the regular season, Griffith won six consecutive postseason games, enough to reach the 3A State Tournament Finals.
Its run to the championship game was controversial — as the team advanced deeper in the tournament, reporters and basketball fans across the state wondered whether the Panthers should be there at all.
The Griffith community, though, didn’t have to wonder.
“At least our kids get to play when they’re supposed to be playing,” Adams said prior to the state title game. “And that’s tonight, for the state championship.”
Posters and banners congratulating the Griffith boys’ basketball team decorated the town.
Jeff Bridges, the owner of Bridges’ Restaurant and Sports Bar, a popular sports bar in Griffith that opened 33 years ago, grew up in Griffith. He helped organize a fan bus to drive down to Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
On the day of state title, the Griffith game was playing on TV at Bridges'.
“We’re one tight-knit community,” Bridges said.
It was common for Griffith players to come into Bridges’ with their families or friends or as a team after Friday night games. People outside the community, Bridges said, made one incident bigger than what it was.
“I’ve known these kids for years,” he said. “They’ve always been very mature and polite kids, all of them. There’s not a bad kid in that group.”
Before the game, Cox said he didn’t care who won. Because they’re all members of the IHSAA, he wishes the best for them all and doesn’t pick favorites. Griffith ultimately lost a 62-56 game to Guerin Catholic.
The Panthers’ run to the state title was finished. But Cox wasn’t letting go.
***
After the state tournament, the IHSAA appealed the court’s decision to allow Hammond and Griffith into the state tournament.
To Cox, the Hammond-Griffith fight is a perfect representation of a serious sportsmanship issue that’s arisen during the past couple of years — a problem he wants to eliminate as soon as possible.
The intent of the IHSAA’s appeal is to make the point that rules and punishments set forth by the association should be followed.
If the kids get half their penalty taken away, they are being taught they can get away with similar bad behavior in the future, Cox said.
There have been two incidents in middle schools and two in high schools this school year.
Cox admits that four is a very low percentage considering how many games are played across high school sports in one year, but he said it only takes once for a punch to turn into a gunshot.
One of those four incidents began in the bleachers at a high school boys’ basketball game between Gary Roosevelt and Fort Wayne Bishop Luers. A fight broke out between fans that spilled into the aisles and then onto the floor before officials had both teams return to their respective locker rooms.
To fight the problem, Cox encourages all schools to review their security plans and have discussions with law enforcement to make sure sporting events are safe.
At a conference earlier this year, the commissioner asked a group of athletic administrators to raise their hand if they metal-detect fans as they enter the gym before games. Not one hand was raised.
How then, Cox asked himself, do we know that weapons aren’t being brought into schools?
“And how are we to know that the parent of a child who is flagrantly fouled into a wall where they looked like they might be hurt seriously — and maybe even paralyzed — how do we know that that parent doesn’t come out of the stands and shoot the kid that did it?”
***
Moore Sr. still can’t believe what happened that night.
“I still live it in my mind,” he said. “It just happened so fast. I’m thinking, ‘What could we have done differently?’”
He knows these kids. They aren’t violent — it was just one instance. Adams agrees it could’ve happened anywhere.
“That’s not our community,” he said. “That can happen to anybody. Everybody’s just one play away from that happening, no matter where you’re at.”
What shocks Moore Sr. most is that many of the Hammond and Griffith players are friends off the court.
They play on AAU teams together. They even spend time together outside of basketball.
On the night of March 16, the Hammond and Griffith boys’ basketball teams gathered for a banquet in the Griffith High School gym.
They all wore dress shirts and ties. Parents and coaches were there. The event recognized the accomplishments of two teams and unified two communities.
At the end of the night, all players and coaches posed together for a photo.
They formed three rows, one player from each team holding a basketball.
Most smiled and some had their arms around each other, standing under the basket where a month earlier one foul caused a season of turmoil.
