West Side, not Gary West

Just in case you pre-med majors were busy reading the "How to Heal a Point Guard's Sprained Ankle" in your textbooks or everybody else was busy practicing pronouncing Ebi Ere's name, I watched some of the high school state championship games over the weekend so you didn't have to watch.\nLet me just say you didn't miss much.\nThe Indiana Class 4A state title game between West Side and Pike featured the usual anti-Region bias and subtle racism that has been going on for decades. West Side won 58-55, which, given what they had to go through, was just reward.\nThe broadcasters calling the game on the Lesea Sports Network insisted referring to West Side as "Gary West." Anybody who calls the school Gary West I can assure you has not spent much time north of Rensselaer. That's just probably how some Indiana High School Athletic Association PR doofus wrote it down for the woefully inept broadcasters -- all is forgiven, Steve "Snapper" Jones -- to say.\nThey went on to credit the game's great turnout to the folks from Gary. I am sure this was not meant maliciously, but it sure rings of, "Gee, I didn't know that many people liked basketball up in Gary."\nThe pollsters also totally missed out on West Side. They were not ranked going into the tournament, which is absolutely ridiculous given the talent on that team. Christopher Hunter -- think Jeff Newton, only seven feet tall -- is going to Michigan, and Brandon Cameron, the jitterbug point guard, is Penn State-bound. How many other teams in the state had two Big Ten-caliber players?\nI propose that after guys broadcasting the game find Gary on the map that they hand the map to the people voting in the polls.\nThe sideline reporter for the game was so up on West Side that he needed to hold a note card telling him who the West Side coach was when interviewing John Boyd during halftime and postgame. Boyd, whose sideline behavior makes other wild men like John Calipari look catatonic, deserves a lot of credit for teaching his team discipline and poise, especially in the face of bad calls.\nWhile I have rarely agreed with the Gary schools' insistence that any loss they suffer was because they got jobbed by the referees, I actually began to sympathize early in the fourth quarter. With West Side desperately trying to hang on to what once was a 19-point lead against Pike's withering press (the broadcasters didn't need to remind us that Pike was from Indianapolis), the officials nailed Hunter with his fourth foul. The call was ridiculous, as Hunter was called for rooting out a defender on offense when in fact he barely touched the defender.\nHunter simply tossed the ball back to the official, turned his head and ran back to the other end of the court. He showed amazing restraint, and frankly the IHSAA should have given him the Trester Award for Mental Attitude right then. In keeping with protocol though, they waited until after the game to give Hunter the well-deserved Trester.\nMeanwhile, Delta won the 3A state title from Fort Wayne Harding. Can somebody please explain how a school from Muncie wound up in the south Semi-state? Did Gov. O'Bannon annex Michigan when I wasn't paying attention?\nOf course, what was especially funny was that the broadcasters spent most of the game telling us how many great teams there are in the southern part of the state.\nWhile West Side and Delta revel in glory, the bigger issue still remains: The four-class system stinks. If the IHSAA had read former Herald-Times sports editor Bob Hammel's bible on the subject "Hoosiers-Classified: Indiana's Love Affair With One-Class Basketball," then we might have avoided state title games that have the importance and excitement of a quilting bee. Or the Rose Bowl.\nHammel's best idea that he wrote about in his book was having a tournament during the Christmas and New Year's seasons for the small-class schools. If the Rossvilles of the world are that hopeless, then give them something for which to play.\nCutting down to three classes, a proposal that will go into effect next year, is a start.\nUltimately, we need to go back to one class before Hoosier Hysteria is something we tell our grandkids about.