March madness is back and Hoosier hoopsters delight in the idea that once again, our state is well represented in the NCAA tournament. Whether you follow the sport or not, if you’re a Hoosier, you surely smile when you hear that five teams (Butler, Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame, and Valparaiso) made the dance. No doubt, some casual fans may even believe that the game was invented here. It was not, Massachusetts can claim that honor. But whoever heard of “Massachusetts Hysteria”? But did you realize that Dr. James Naismith considered Indiana the ersatz home of the game he created?
Naismith invented the sport of basketball in December of 1891 for his physical education class at the Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA. The first contest between intra-squad teams was played on December 21 of that year using an old soccer ball and a pair of peach baskets nailed to the lower railing of the gym balcony. He wrote out 13 rules for his new game, tacked them to the walls behind each basket, and divided his class of 18 into two teams of 9 players each. The objective of the game was simple: throw the ball into the basket.
Every time a point was scored, the game was halted long enough for the janitor to trot out a ladder and retrieve the ball. In time, the bottoms of the fruit baskets were removed to speed up the game. Bizarrely, when they cut those first holes in the basket, they did not think to knock out the entire bottom which caused the ball to remain stuck just the same. They were forced to use a broomstick to poke the ball out of the basket, which was still less annoying than climbing a ladder. The first public basketball game was played in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 11, 1892.
A year later, Presbyterian pastor Rev. Nicholas Craig McKay, an associate of Dr. James Naismith in Springfield, became the general secretary of the Crawfordsville YMCA. Rev. McKay saw this new game as the perfect way to keep Hoosier athletes active during the long Hoosier winter months. McKay eschewed the peach baskets and hired a local blacksmith to forge two hoops instead. He then attached a pair of old coffee sacks to catch the ball. Eureka, an Indiana tradition was born! On March 16, 1894, the first game played between two different towns outside of Massachusetts was played at the old “Terminal Building” in Crawfordsville. McKay’s YMCA team beat the Lafayette YMCA team 45 -21.
The March 23, 1894, edition of The Crawfordsville Star noted as many as 300 fans paid admission to witness that first game, “crowding into the gallery to look down on the gladiatorial scene below.” The game caught on like wildfire, with players from Crawfordsville spreading the word about the new sport to nearby communities. Soon, teams of husky Hoosier farmboys were playing basketball on a skating rink in Madison, the dirt fields of Martinsville and in a Carmel lumber yard. Still others pushed church pews against the wall and dragged desks from schoolhouses out into the snow to play basketball.
On February 19, 1897, Wabash College played Purdue University at the old Crawfordsville YMCA in the first official intercollegiate basketball game. As the game spread, innovations began to appear. Before backboards, peach crate baskets were generally attached to a 10 foot pole and a ball was shot into the crate. But over-zealous, sometimes partisan, fans kept interfering with players’ shots. Some fans treated wayward shots landing in the stands like baseballs at a ballpark by running out of the gym with their prize. Also, without backboards, rebounding was not a part of the game.
Peach baskets were abandoned and replaced with metal barrel hoops and bottomless nets, negating the need to push the ball out with a stick. The first backboards were constructed of chicken wire to allow an unobstructed view for the fans. In 1904, wooden backboards became mandatory because of safety reasons — there were reports of enthusiastic fans injured by the chicken wire as they tried to slap the ball out of the basket. But you can’t see through wood, so by 1909, glass backboards were becoming more common.
By 1911, Indiana had a state high school basketball tournament. Within a decade, basketball had spread throughout the state. Although Naismith had published 13 original rules to govern his game, the actual interpretation of these rules varied widely among Indiana communities. Seems that Indiana wanted to make the game their own from the very start. And, if they did not succeed in changing the rules of the game, they certainly succeeded in changing the way it was viewed by fans. In Indiana, basketball became a religion.
That very first state championship was won by none other than Crawfordsville. No surprise when you consider they won the state title in 1905, 1906 and 1911 when champions were determined by best record alone. In 1913 and 1914, the state saw its first back-to-back champions from Wingate High School: a team led by six-foot, four-inch Homer Stonebraker. It was said that Homer Stonebraker could consistently hit from anywhere on the court. It is noteworthy that the first eight state champions came from within a 30-mile radius of that very first game played in Indiana: Crawfordsville: 1911; Lebanon, 1912, 1917, 1918; Wingate, 1913, 1914; Thorntown, 1915 and Lafayette Jefferson, 1916.
In 1925, Dr. James Naismith visited Indiana to witness the passion his game had inspired among Hoosiers. The game’s inventor watched the state finals among 15,000 screaming fans of Hoosier Hysteria. The good doctor watched as Frankfort defeated Kokomo 34 to 20. Later he wrote, “The possibilities of basketball as seen there were a revelation to me.”
Hoosier hoops legend Everett Case won his first basketball championship at the age of 16 as a star player for Anderson High School. In 1925, Case won his first coaching title with the Frankfort Hot Dogs, and he accepted the trophy from Dr. James Naismith — the only coach in the history of Indiana basketball to do so. He would become the first coach to win the state championship four times.
In 1936, Naismith returned to the Hoosier state to attend the IHSAA championship game between Frankfort and Fort Wayne Central. Once again, Everett Case led his Hot Dogs to a 50 to 24 victory. Recalling his first exposure to Hoosier Hysteria over two decades earlier, he said the sight of the stadium “packed with fifteen thousand people, gave me a thrill I shall not soon forget.”
In a speech at the Annual Indianapolis YMCA Invitational Dinner on March 27, 1936. Naismith told the audience: “Basketball really had its beginning in Indiana which remains today the center of the sport.” Naismith associated Indiana’s national distinction in basketball with the popularity and success of the state high school basketball tournament.
In an agrarian state whose seasons were measured by planting, growing and harvesting rather than dates on a calendar, basketball was a perfect fit. The game thrived because winter was downtime in a farming society and because it was played indoors. But most especially, unlike football, basketball thrived because even the smallest of schools could field a team. Besides, football required expensive equipment to play. Basketball in Indiana became one of two winter gathering places; church on Sunday and the gym on Friday. The simile is not lost on Hoosier hoops fans.
Next Week: Part 2 — The saga of Naismith’s rules
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
