GUEST OPINION: ‘Not just about the sports,’ and other reflections of a Panther

By MARK MEDLYN
Guest Columnist

June, 1972. 600 plus juniors, many of them wearing newly acquired class rings that said “Bloomington High,” left the school for the last time. When they returned in the fall, they would be part of the inaugural class of 1973 at the newly formed Bloomington High School South.

The early 1970s were a time of school consolidation. Bartholomew and Vigo Counties, along with other counties in the state, closed their smaller county schools and formed larger city schools.

Bloomington High and Smithville High were combined to make one school, Bloomington High School South. North was formed with students leaving University High and Unionville High. In that case, everyone lost their school. In the case of South, only the Smithville kids lost their schools.

I would like to say that the transition went smoothly. It did not. The first order of business was the election of class officers. Two of the candidates were well known to the rest of the students, having attended elementary and junior high together.

Imagine our surprise on election day, when a student from Smithville won the election. We thought that there was election fraud, but the principal assured us that the path to victory was the dividing of the votes of the students from BHS and the single block vote by the students from SHS.

Years later, the truth came out that the superintendent wanted to make sure that the Smithville students were welcomed into the building. Quite frankly 50 years later, I have yet to see a single Smithville student attend any of our infrequent reunions.

Going to BHS (South) was a magical time for the students. During our tenure there, we were state champions 12 times. Three years in football, wresting and swimming. One year of golf and baseball and of track.

Consider this: Indiana was only a single class of sports back then. Title IX had not kicked in yet, so there were no organized women sports. Girls could go out for the team, as I discovered to my dismay when a freshman tried out for the tennis team.

Suddenly, as a senior, I was having to play a freshman to secure my spot on the team. She was a very good player, but my psyche would not allow a freshman girl take my spot on the team. It was a credit to my coach, Dale Scott, the father of daughters, that he wanted to give girls a chance to play when the state said they could not.

Fortunately for my teenage angst I beat her which allowed me to stay on the tennis team. My goal was to find a girlfriend as a member of the sports team. I figured that girls wanted to date athletes. I found out later that not many high school girls want to date tennis players.

The girl I began to date, was the editor of the newspaper and I was a geek photographer.

But life at South was not all about sports, as we had nearly two dozen National Merit Scholarship winners. I thought that this was, as with winning sports championships, was the norm for high school students. To my amazement, that was not the case, that many schools do not even have one semi-finalist.

The band, the arts, the newspaper all were award winning. As I describe it, it is “Breaking Away” meets “Hoosiers.” In a school of 1,900 we never had law enforcement in the building ever. We had a vice principal and that was all we needed.

Last month I returned back to South for the first time since graduation. I was fortunate enough to speak to the tennis team on what it was like to be on the tennis team some 50 years ago. This year’s tennis team had over 20 kids playing. We were lucky to have nine.

But, as I pointed out, something never change. Instead of a catered dinner as the football team gets, they did a pot luck.

Plans are being made for our 50th reunion. Sadly we seem to be losing members by the month. I found out that the girl that I dated in high school just lost her husband to cancer. It seems that life does march on and we are just along for the ride.

But in the history of high schools in Indiana, I doubt that anyone can match what we did during those three short years that we were Panthers.

Mark C. Medlyn of Brown County is an occasional community columnist. A graduate of Bloomington High School South and Indiana University, he has worked as a police officer and an adjunct college instructor, authored a textbook on the Illinois vehicle code, and became a substitute teacher in Illinois upon his retirement from full-time law enforcement in 2007. He and his wife, a retired university instructor, have been Brown County property owners since 2015.