Myths and tidbits about high school basketball history

Multi-class basketball that began in the late 1990s killed attendance at games, particularly the tournaments. Girls basketball teams didn't exist at Indiana high schools before the early 1970s. And the first basketball game on Hoosier soil was played in 1894 at a YMCA in Crawfordsville.     All of those are misconceptions, a basketball historian says. So, Hoosier History Live will explore prevailing assumptions about Hoosier high school hoops as well as share tidbits about the history of the sport that has long been part of the state's cultural identity. This will include a look at unusual sites that once served as gyms such as a Studebaker factory in South Bend as well as racial obstacles that confronted a team from Michigan City, Ind., in the 1950s. Nelson's guest will be Matt Werner, a basketball historian and author based in LaPorte County who is known for his extensive research into the sport's storied past in Indiana. In an in-depth analysis published last March in Nuvo that used data supplied by the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA), Matt challenged the assumption that the elimination in 1997 of the single-class tournament system in Indiana (immortalized in the movie Hoosiers based on the upset victory in 1954 of tiny Milan High School) killed attendance. Instead, as Matt documented, attendance at tournament games, including sectional, regional and semi-state playoffs, had been in a 25-year slump beginning in 1962, the peak year for tournament attendance. Multi-class basketball, in which Indiana high schools compete against teams of similar size, actually slowed the rate of decline, Matt has concluded.