Hoops ruled in Jay

Basketball ruled.
Given that Jay County is a rural Indiana community, it should come as no surprise that Hoosier hoops hysteria dominated the landscape.
Of the 28 sectional championships won by the eight high schools that pre-dated consolidation into Jay County High School, 26 of them came on the basketball court.
Some of that disparity is because of the lack of tournaments in other sports — the state football tournament didn’t begin until 1973, and even then only 12 teams were involved — and because the IHSAA didn’t start sanctioning girls sports until the 1970s. But still, the state’s love for hoops held true in Jay County as much as anywhere else.
“I think basketball was definitely the king,” said Paul Minnich, who coached Redkey High School to its lone sectional baseball title.
The sport carried most of the limelight in high school athletics for Bryant, Dunkirk, Gray, Madison, Pennville, Portland and Redkey high schools.
“Basketball, that was a social event on a Friday night or Saturday night in town,” said Butch Gray, who played for Portland’s only sectional championship baseball team and went on to coach football and golf at Jay County High School. “All the business people sat together. That was the time that they all got together, a lot like you see the Jay County fans here today.
“It was very spirited. The people really, really backed the team.”
Beyond sectionals, there were traditions then that are no longer possible post-consolidation.
Bryant and Poling, which were separated by just 5 miles, played for The Little Brown Jug. The school that owned the trophy kept it until losing to the other, a tradition that began in 1935 and continued until Poling closed in 1963.
There were also the Little Four and Big Four tournaments.
The Little Four was played for 15 seasons with Bryant, Gray, Madison and Poling involved. Bryant won seven tournament titles, with Gray winning the first five titles before Bryant ran off five in a row of its own on the way to a record seven.
The Big Four included Dunkirk (21 championships) and Redkey each for 39 years and Albany for 38. Portland participated for about half of the span — 21 years — during which the tournament was played from 1936 through 1975, with Montpelier, Bryant, Pennville and Winchester also involved at times.
While Dunkirk owned the Big Four, Portland had the upper hand in the county tournament that began in 1922 and continued until Madison closed in 1967. The Panthers won 14 crowns compared to 12 for Redkey and eight each for Pennville and Madison.
And as the biggest school in the county, Portland also had the most sectional success with 12 championships. That included a pair of regional winners, the only such titles in the history of the county until JCHS made its run to the Class 3A state finals in 2006, in 1946 and ’48.
John Bright was one of the key players on the 1948 regional title team after moving to Portland from Ridgeville a year earlier. And though those Panthers were known for their three Bs — Pete Brewster, Dick Bond and Bright — he said the group was successful because it was a true team.
“We had togetherness,” said Bright. “There were no one or two people running the team. We had a five-man team. Everybody knew their role out there and we clicked pretty good together.”
Other teams clicked from time to time as well, with Dunkirk winning the last of its six sectional championships in 1961. Pennville earned the last of its four a year later, and Redkey and Bryant each had two.
And though basketball was the favorite, perhaps no team in the history of the county click quite like the 1945 Portland Panthers football team.
Coached by the same Harold Wallace who would lead the basketball team to the regional title later in the year, Portland was perfect. Not only did the team not lose a game, it didn’t allow a point.
A 38-0 dismantling of the Garrett Railroads to open the season was a harbinger of things to come.
The Panthers racked up 68 points, blistering the Decatur Yellow Jackets a week later for their biggest blowout of the season. Shutouts of Coldwater (Ohio), Hartford City, Decatur again, New Haven and finally Bluffton followed.
The group that included names like Earl Schoenlein, Jim Hardy, Bob Gibson, Bill Stipp, Mickey Haviland, Donald Loy, Ward Weisel and “Big Max” Aker finished its perfect year having scored 309 points while allowing none.
Portland’s biggest football star — Brewster — wasn’t even on the roster, as his mother refused to allow him to play. It wasn’t until his senior year, when his sister forged a permission slip, that he joined the team.
The deception worked out well, as Brewster went on to play at Purdue in college and then for the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL. He later became a receivers coach in the NFL, earning a Super Bowl ring with the Kansas City Chiefs.
Redkey had an undefeated baseball team in 1960, in the days predating the state tournament. And when the IHSAA started putting brackets together in 1967, Jay County teams had immediate success. Portland took the first sectional title in the area, and Redkey followed with one of its own in 1968.
“It was kind of a bid deal with Redkey,” said Mark Stigleman, who recalls beating Delta in the championship game played at Ball State. “Matter of fact, I really think we could have went farther.”
The Wolves coughed up a 5-1 lead in a regional loss to Bellmont.
“It was just a ton of fun,” Stigleman added. “I’ve never forgot winning it.”
There are many other memories from that bygone era.
Most basketball players recall also being part of their schools’ cross country teams for conditioning purposes.
Gray noted that, when he was in high school, Portland did not have a track, but rather ran all of its meets on the road. And, at one time, track meets were contested on the grandstand track at Jay County Fairgrounds.
The biggest differences between then and now, other than the facilities, many agreed, is the amount of time athletes spend in organized sports.
“When I played we had maybe an all-star team and that was it,” said Stigleman, whose son, Shannon, was a baseball star at Jay County and whose grandson, Cole, is now a three-sport athlete for the Patriots. “That’s the biggest difference I see with these kids. They are busy, busy, busy.”
Minnich agreed, noting the move toward athletes specializing in a single sport. And Bright recalls that Portland’s 1948 regional winner was more of a group of “barnyard players” that didn’t really run a set offense.
It was a different era when there were eight, and then five, high schools before consolidation.
Travel teams and video games didn’t exist. But sports were big.
“We played because we loved to play the game,” said Gray. “That’s what you did.”