Hoosier Hysteria

We have two middle schools in our corporation, which is unique for a community of our size.  The one in Milford is quite a bit smaller than the one at Wawasee.  No one really talks about consolidating them.  In 1992 when the Wawasee Middle School was opened, Milford still had a relatively new building and taxpayers did not want to see it go to waste.  Students can choose to go to either school, and Milford does get about 6-8 students per grade from Syracuse or North Webster Elementary Schools at the beginning of 6th grade.  Almost that many from Milford make Wawasee their choice, so the student population in the buildings does not change much from year to year.  Milford still has the small time feel of yesteryear with an average of 70 students per grade.

Time has marched on and there hasn't been a lot of controversy until this fall.  The athletic department at the high school wrote a proposal for the school board to consolidate the 7th and 8th grade basketball programs.  This has been talked about for the past several years by both the girls and boys head basketball coaches, but I don't believe anyone in the public ever thought it would happen.  There was quite a bit of discussion at the board meeting, but they did agree to a pilot year of combining the two programs.  

Six of our other middle school sports have consolidated over the past few years and there were some who complained, but overall it has gone very well.  All of that changed tonight.  The athletic director had a meeting at Wawasee Middle School to explain the decision and give his vision of the future of basketball in our community.  After his initial explanation, several of the 8th grade Wawasee parents became irate.  They did not want their children's chances of winning middle school games to be compromised by combining with the Milford teams.  They also loudly criticized last year's boys head basketball coach while blaming Milford school and their lack of athletic interest in causing this change.

Doug sat there dumbfounded.  It was small town, small mindedness at its best.  As he told me the story, we kept laughing thinking of the movie "Hoosiers."  An angry mob mentality occurs at a meeting in that movie much like ours tonight.  One of the boys stops it when he says, "Coach stays, I play."  Changed everyone's opinion as he was their superstar.  I wish Jimmy Chitwood would have showed up tonight and ended the arguing.  Nothing hurts a program more than a group of parents bad mouthing it.  Kudos to our athletic director for initiating change.  It may not affect our high school teams' records, but it is worth trying.