“Success is a poor teacher.”
That quote attributable to Bill Gates, among others, is one I think Brown County boys’ basketball Coach Ronnie Lewis would just like to find out if it is really a true statement.
The quote’s implied promise of positive results when experiencing the alternative has not been forthcoming this season.
Reading Brad Baughman’s mid-season report on the Eagles there is much to be positive about the future. Coach Lewis is a young man just getting started and he has a young team with underclassmen getting plenty of playing time.
I did not coach at the high school level, but I did coach middle school. The current Eagle slump has brought back memories of a similar period in my coaching career.
At our school the basketball coaches would have the same boys, first as 7th graders and then move up with them to 8th grade.
Well, we were not successful as 7th graders and with no new talent moving into the district the coming season looked bleak as well. And that was the case.
There were no victories as the season progressed. With a handful of games remaining I was certainly not looking forward to those long cold bus rides to games offering little hope of victory.
At this point I will insert the date of this winter of our discontent: January 1978. And it was late in this month that Mother Nature provided us with the most memorable experience and perhaps the highlight of that season.
Many of you will remember that date. If you did not experience it you might have caught the local news reminding us last month of the anniversary of that infamous “Blizzard of ’78.”
It was pretty much the worst snowstorm in Indiana’s recorded history. Practically everything closed down as the wind and snowfall created drifts the likes of which no one had ever witnessed before. Our remaining games were canceled.
It was a winter to remember.
In the case of my coaching memories however, a winter to forget. Or so I thought.
Some years after I had retired from the coaching portion of my career I was over at the local elementary school walking and jogging on the nature trail. Afterwards I often got the basketball out of the car and shot a few shots on the school’s court.
An old car pulled up and out stepped Larry, one of the players on that team of the “Blizzard” season. We exchanged all those pleasantries common when old friends meet and then took turns shooting and rebounding for each other.
After a while we sat down on the bench next to the court actually taking the positions we had shared those years ago. Larry was never a starter. Larry was a great sports fan and immediately began expounding on the current situation with the Pacers and the Hoosiers, and the recently concluded NFL season.
It was not long before his thought train switched over to our time together in middle school and more specifically his time on the school’s basketball team.
“Coach, do you remember the Pendleton game? What a first half we had. Had ’em down ten at the half!”
I did remember that. But my memory was more about the second half where we lost the lead and the game. Larry continued about other moments and certainly we talked about the blizzard.
Driving home my mind was fixed on Larry. He never played sports in high school. The only time he was on a school’s team and got to wear the uniform was that time in middle school. Whatever I could or could not remember about that time was embedded in Larry’s mind and would be there his whole life.
Coach Lewis, remember, “It’s all about the journey.”
Jim Watkins is a Brown County resident who was a public school teacher for 42 years and has special interest in history. He is also a member of the Brown County Historical Society. He can be reached at [email protected].
