Friday, February 23, 2024
Golden Bears Look for One More Senior Moment
(Clockwise, starting top left) Kohen Myers, Kyle Clouse, Luke Brinkman, Ethan Lambert and Brock Kuhn and their families are recognized before last night’s final regular season game. | photos by KRISTIAAN RAWLINGS
With last night’s loss to Batesville, Shelbyville Golden Bears seniors are especially anxious for the sectional opener against Whiteland next week.
“We’ve got a chip on our shoulder,” Luke Brinkman said.
After winning the sectional opener last year, they lost to Whiteland by three points. The rematch of sorts gives the five seniors a chance to extend their final season.
“This group of seniors have been the foundation to the improvements in our program,” Coach John Hartnett said last night.
Brinkman, Ethan Lambert and Kohen Myers have been with the program since their freshmen year. Kyle Clouse played as a freshman and took two years off before returning, joined by fellow senior Brock Kuhn.
“I missed the team,” Clouse confessed. “I realized that basketball is my sport.”
Their freshmen year, the Bears were senior-heavy, leading to the then-underclassmen to grow up quickly.
“I went from no varsity experience to starting every game my sophomore year,” Brinkman said. “It was eye-opening, from both the physical and mental sides of it.”
“Eye-opening” also meant challenging.
“It was a rough year,” Myers admitted. “But we came back much better as juniors and were just a couple of seconds away from a sectional championship.”
The tough loss to Whiteland only intensified their summer workouts and team bonding, which includes Saturday breakfasts at local restaurants.
“Everyone enjoys being around each other,” Myers said.
Kuhn agreed. “The energy is great. We do a lot together as a team.”
The Bears finished at .500, with one more win than last year, and several memorable moments. A December game was suspended in the fourth quarter after a New Castle player suffered a traumatic injury. The teams finished the final four minutes the following week in a quiet Garrett Gymnasium, with only a few parents in the stands.
“It was surreal. We went through warm-ups just like we had a full game,” Lambert said.
Shelbyville won and New Castle bought pizza for a post-game meal.
“We (the two teams) just sat in the cafeteria and talked to each other,” Lambert said.
Lambert was the inadvertent focus of another game, at Connersville, during which the opposing school’s fans chanted his and a family member’s names throughout the contest.
“That was the craziest game. They were posting on social media and had made specific cheers,” Lambert said.
He finished with 12 points and 8 rebounds and the Bears took home the win. “That was such an important game to me.”
The Bears started off strong this season and played well against conference foes.
“Our schedule is very tough, and we have handled it well. We have also had a few that we probably should have won, but let slip away,” Hartnett said, adding, “I love this group and how hard they work each and every day.”
Now it’s time to take care of year-old business at Tuesday’s sectional match.
“We have to leave it all out there on the court,” Lambert said.
NOTEBOOK:
A driver hit a utility pole at the intersection of S. Harrison and Hasecuster Lane last Friday. The primary factor cited on the report was “speed too fast for weather conditions.”
NATIONAL NEWS: The reality of modern medical science is that it requires lots and lots of monkeys to happen, as the primates make important test subjects for all kinds of medical and biological experiments. China was a longtime supplier of monkeys to the United States, supplying half of the 70,000 research monkeys used annually in the United States. That changed with the pandemic, when China stopped exporting them to the U.S. and never resumed, instead breeding monkeys for its own domestic research needs and also competing with the U.S. for monkeys from other countries. The price of monkeys has skyrocketed for American researchers, who now pay about $20,000 per test animal, up from $7,000 per animal a few years ago, and it’s a nationwide scientific problem the NIH is keen to solve. Safer Human Medicine, a company that supplies monkeys, aims to build a $396 million breeding facility in Georgia that can house up to 30,000 monkeys to plug that gap, starting with the cynomolgus macaques needed for pharmaceutical research and then potentially expanding to the rhesus macaques often used in academic research. (Science/Numlock)
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This Day in Shelby County History
2014: The Shelby County Solid Waste Management District’s board approved adding a recycling site in the Pleasant View area. The site would be at Michigan Road and Walnut St.
2004: State Sen. Bob Jackman and State Rep. Luke Messer discussed issues at a legislative breakfast held at the Golden Corral restaurant. The event was sponsored by the Shelby County Chamber of Commerce.
Shelbyville High School senior Zach Tatlock qualified for State Finals in the 100-yard backstroke.
1994: Shelbyville High School senior Danny Moore was selected as a candidate for the 1994 McDonald’s All-American high school basketball team. Moore, a 6-foot-11 senior center, was one of 1,400 players nominated nationwide.
With their new home on State Road 9 complete, Dan and Kathy Blackburn and their 28 Haitian adoptees began moving from their home in an old Jennings County school. Carl and Bev Mohr had donated the land for the new home.
1984: The Shelbyville High School Concert Band and Wind Band performed with guest conductor Gary Clepluch, University of Dayton professor, at Breck Auditorium. A newspaper photo showed woodwind quintet Holly Collins, Kathy Conrad, Carol Bowman, Jill Nelson and Susan Rammelsberg performing.
Court members at the Waldron Sweetheart Dance were Lori Kuhn, Troy Atwood, Tammy Wilson, Warren Brokering, Lona Corley, Bill Goolsby, Sherri Fisher, Allen Stucker, Greg Larrison (King), Mamie Monroe (Queen), Kathy Wilson, Deron Dile, Jeannie Evans, Tony Kuhn, Rebecca Harker, Gary Larrison, Tammy Yarling and Greg Yeend.
1974: Police officer Jim Casey corralled a possum on the porch at 33 W. Taylor St. and put it in his trunk to be turned loose at Sunset Park. The possum, however, refused to leave the trunk. After many minutes of careful work with a mop handle, Casey was able to pry the possum out of the trunk and set it free.
1964: Mrs. Bass, wife of Union Township basketball coach Jerry Bass, started baton twirling classes for girls, held in the school gym. Members of the group were Jody Long, Connie Marshall, Melinda Skidmore, Janie Theobald, Cheryl Kendall, Sheryl Davis, Vickie Brown, Barbara John, Mila Bassett, Debbie Crim, Sandy Wise, Marie Cowin, Jeanne Skillman, Vicky King, Rita Crim, Nancy Moore, Cindy Crim, Diana Isley, Becky Taylor, Teresa Theobald and Carren Marshall.
1954: Over 300 were expected at the annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, Democrat party chairman Fred Gravely announced. Fred Cramer would be master of ceremonies and Peter Lux, former vice-chairman of the Agricultural Stabilization Committee, would speak.
Draft notices were sent to Donald Allison (106 E. Mechanic St.), Max McAhren (formerly of Morristown), Kenneth Nigh (R.R. 1, Shelbyville) and Bruce Dale Sanders (R.R. 4, Franklin). They would be sent to Camp Chaffee, Ark. Jack Compton, 21, Columbus Road, would report March 4 to take his physical examination.
1944: Camp Atterbury published an ad in The Shelbyville News seeking “several young and middle aged colored women as sales clerks and cafeteria workers, also several young men and middle aged men as bar tenders and clerks.”
A three-month drought was broken by heavy rains, which The Republican called “the most welcome news Shelby County farmers have received in some time.”
1934: State Rep. Bert Evans was the speaker at the annual ham-and-egg feast of the Coon Hunters’ Association of Shelby Township, held at the township consolidated school on State Road 9. The ladies of Lewis Creek Baptist Church made lunch, and proceeds would be used toward the purchase of carpet for the church. All 220 tickets had been sold within days.
1924: A revival in progress at the Christian Church in St. Paul had added 40 new members. Church membership was 240; 101 members had been added in the previous 11 months.
1914: Peter Demmer, who recently moved here from Rushville to establish a cigar factory at 108 South Harrison St., reported he was doing well. Demmer had four men and two boys working in the factory. “The smokers of Shelbyville are taking mighty kindly to the two brands that Mr. Demmer is making, ‘Big Ben,’ his leader, and ‘Pouch,’ both 5 cent cigars and pronounced extra good by competent judges,” The Republican said.
OBITUARIES
None today