Silver honoree

During her high school basketball career, Shannon (Freeman) Frogge racked up her fair share of accolades.
She was selected as Gatorade’s Indiana Player of the Year during her senior season. And The Associated Press named her first-team All State.
Frogge, a 1986 Jay County graduate, is being honored again today for her high school basketball career as part of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame’s Silver Anniversary Team. She will take part in an event at the Hall of Fame in New Castle today at 11 a.m. and a banquet tonight in Indianapolis.
“It’s a big honor for sure,” said Frogge, now a Utah resident, who was also chosen as an Indiana All-Star and was an honorable mention selection to the USA Today All-America Team. “I guess the thing that amazes me the most is I look back, and it’s this way with everything in life, when you work hard at something and you have a passion for it … how over and over and over again it pays off. Who would have thought 25 years later that this would happen? It means a lot. It’s really special.”
In the JCHS girls basketball record book, the name Freeman still dominates.
She remains the school’s all-time leader in points (1,458) and rebounds (831). And she holds the records for single-season points (602), single-game points (40), single-season rebounds (280) and most consecutive free throws (21).
In many of those categories no one has come close. Frogge scored nearly 400 more points than anyone in Patriot history and has more than 200 rebounds more than the runner-up in that category.
“It’s kind of crazy,” Frogge said. “There have been a lot of great players who have come through. I see a lot of other really great players’ names (in the record book).
“I’m hoping pretty soon someone will come through and erase all of those.”
Frogge also carries the distinction of having led Jay County to its first sectional championship.
She scored 21 points in powering the Patriots to a 55-42 title win over Bluffton in 1985.
But she said her most memorable moment came a year later, in a sectional semifinal win over Norwell.
Jay County trailed 27-9 in the second quarter of that game before rallying back to tie the score at 42 in the final minute. Frogge missed a shot with five seconds left, but grabbed the rebound, dribbled a couple of times and hit a bank-shot at the buzzer to win the game.
“That was amazing,” said Frogge, who finished the game with 25 points and poured in 30 two days later as the Patriots defeated South Adams for their second sectional crown. “We all just really wanted to win. It was a team effort.”
Those sectional championship teams, which finished 20-3 and 18-4 respectively, went on to fall in the regional semifinal round — to Bishop Dwenger in 1985 and to eventual state champion Northrop in ’86. But they also started a run of eight sectional titles in a span of 12 years for JCHS.
Frogge continued her basketball career at the University of Kentucky, where she started nine games and averaged 2.4 points and 2.1 rebounds in 13.2 minutes per game as a freshman.
Feeling homesick, and with coach Terry Hall departing after that season, Frogge transferred to Ball State. Injuries, including a skull fracture, torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her right knee and broken hand, derailed her career with the Cardinals although she was a co-captain for the 1988-89 season.
“(I think about) how much fun it was,” said Frogge, now a personal trainer, as she looked back on her playing career more than two decades later. “I guess when I look back, it’s such a short time in your life, and I miss it. I just remember all the great things. I had such a great high school team, and the fans around here are great.”
Frogge began setting the base for her record-setting high school career when she started playing basketball in the third grade. But it wasn’t until the summer before her eighth-grade year that she “caught the bug,” she said. “It became my passion.”
She said she spent a lot of time that summer at the former Garfield Elementary School, pulling her sister, Jaime, who is nine years younger, there in a wagon from their East Arch Street home. She would split her time playing dolls with Jaime and playing basketball with the guys.
Frogge also gives a lot of the credit for her basketball talents to her father, Joe, a former Portland High School player who was named to the All Jay County Team in 1961. She said she spent countless hours playing against him, and that her mom, Bonita, always said she looked just like dad on the court.
Now she’s looking forward to passing the love of the game on to her own daughters — Cheyenne, 6, and Dakota, 3.
And she looks forward to doing it, as much as possible, in Jay County. When she and her husband Mike made the move to Utah two years ago after spending 12 years in Tennessee, they did so with the agreement that they would come home every summer.
“They’re going to get to grow up the way I did in the summers,” said Frogge, who said she and her family would be back in Portland this year the day after Cheyenne finishes kindergarten. “This will always be home for sure.
“I just want people to know how much I love Jay County, always have, always will.”[[In-content Ad]]