Saturday, January 25, 2025

Jan 25, 2025

Friday Night Lights

Shelby County sunset photo taken yesterday evening by Jack Boyce.

IndyStar Covers Golden Bears

Editor’s note: Since yesterday’s link to The Indianapolis Star article was behind a paywall, it is provided in this newsletter. My apologies for not catching that initially.

25 years since Shelbyville's last sectional title, these Golden Bears look like contenders

by Kyle Neddenriep, The Indianapolis Star

FRANKLIN — Damon Badgley might have said it to get a reaction from a teammate standing next to him. But when the question was posed about the corner 3-pointer being his spot, he had an answer loaded up as quickly as he knocked down those four treys Tuesday night at Franklin.

“Anywhere (is my spot),” Badgley said. “Forty feet in, you better be looking. If not, it’s going up and going in your face.”

The Shelbyville senior flashed a wry smile and did get a reaction from his teammate, Caden Claxton. “That’s a great answer,” Claxton said through a wide grin.

This is the bubbling confidence of a program that won its fourth consecutive game and eight out of nine with a 63-58 overtime victory at Franklin on Tuesday. There was little to suggest that victory in the first half, as Grizzly Cubs guard Jayce Nielsen burned Shelbyville for 15 points and staked Franklin to a 10-point lead.

But Shelbyville chipped away, taking its first lead in the fourth quarter and going ahead for good in overtime on a long jumper by Claxton. The victory was the 13^th of the season for the 13-3 Golden Bears, already the program’s highest mark in six years. The 32-year-old coach, John Hartnett, has been here since then, first as an assistant, then the head coach.

It has been slow build for the Golden Bears, who were 5-18 three seasons ago. But the program doubled its win total the following year, then improved by another game to finish 11-12 last season. This is still a mostly junior-led team (Badgley is the only senior in the top six in scoring) but there is also some urgency now to build on the positive momentum of the season.

“This is huge for our program,” said Hartnett, a 2011 graduate who played on a 15-win team as a senior that lost to New Palestine in the sectional championship. “We’ve been building the last four or five years and it’s finally time to show what we’ve been building for. This junior class, along with (seniors) Damon Badgley and Kenny Owens, those guys are really connecting and playing together. And the biggest part is our program philosophy is to stick together and play together. That’s exactly what we’re doing now and it’s got us eight wins in our last nine games.”

It has been a while since Shelbyville has been a serious contender. The program’s only sectional titles in the class basketball era came in back-to-back seasons in 2000 and ’01, when the Golden Bears won Class 3A sectional crowns despite sub-.500 records. But since a 23-1 season in 2005-06 ended with a heartbreaking 46-45 sectional championship loss to Bloomington South in Columbus, success has been fleeting.

Shelbyville had winning seasons in Hartnett’s junior and senior seasons and were a combined 48-27 over a three-year period from 2017-19 led by Zach Kuhn, the program’s all-time leading scorer with 1,887 points. But that was the last winning basketball at Shelbyville — until now.

“It’s cyclical to some degree,” said Hartnett’s father, also named John Hartnett. “We had three years in a row single-digit wins and then the last three we’ve been in double digits. That junior class has been together since third grade. I give (assistant) Brady Claxton a lot of credit. He brought that group up. We’ve also boosted up our staff to seven people, which really helps cover so many details.”

That includes the elder Hartnett, who was the executive director of the Shelbyville Boys and Girls Club for 40 years before his retirement. He also ran the feeder basketball program for many years before coaching at the middle school and freshman levels for coach Ryan Mack. When his son took over midway through the 2019-20 season, it was natural for father to join son. “My dad taught me everything I know about basketball growing up,” Hartnett said of his father.

“It’s been tremendous for me,” the elder Hartnett said. “I’ve always had a really close relationship with both of my sons and they are both a real source of pride for me. Thankfully, he has a lot of his mother's (Karen) personality. She’s a nurse and you have to be very calm and make decisions in pressure situations. I think that’s one of John’s biggest strengths as a coach. He can evaluate and calmly dissect situations, and I think another strength is he also has a long-term vision for the feeder program and developing kids.”

Shelbyville plays a style that fits its personnel on a guard-heavy roster. Against Franklin, the Golden Bears played mostly a five-out motion offense to pull 6-7 Kolt Nelson away from the basket. But it is often four-out offense with either 6-5 junior Mar Nicholson or 6-4 junior Cole Schene patrolling the interior.

“Fortunately for us, we have a lot of guys who can score the basketball,” the younger Hartnett said. “Everybody knows their role.”

The 5-10 Claxton is the team’s leading scorer at 15.5 points per game but also leads the team in assists at 3.9 per game. Nicholson (14.5 ppg, 5.2 rebounds), Badgley (9.4 ppg, 41% 3-pointers), 6-1 junior Gavin Reed (8.2 ppg, 49% 3-pointers) and Brody Runnebohm (6.1 ppg, 43% 3-pointers) are also major offensive threats.

“I know how to get these guys open,” Claxton said. “They know when I’m driving, and they are always a threat to shoot. Transition is a big part of our offense. That’s where we really succeed; it’s my favorite way to play.”

Besides the team’s talent level, there is another reason for optimism: a classification change. Since the start of class basketball in 1997-98, Shelbyville has been on the edge of being a smaller Class 4A or larger 3A program. For the first time in 14 years, under the new classification structure from the Indiana High School Athletic Association, the Golden Bears dropped to 3A.

But the reaction — from the players, at least — was not exactly elation.

“Honestly, I didn’t like it at first,” Claxton said. “I wanted to play against the best competition. But it is what it is.”

Hartnett said it does make more sense for Shelbyville, which has 1,093 students, to play schools closer to its enrollment than in 4A, which now has 37 schools with more than 2,000 students. But that does not mean it will be easy in 3A, either. Shelbyville’s seven-team Sectional 28 field also includes sixth-ranked New Palestine (11-2), Roncalli (10-3) and Greenwood (9-5) — all programs that were also previously in 4A.

“I think it does help us going down to 3A to play schools that are the same size as us and not go play teams that have 1,000 or 2,000 more students than us,” Hartnett said. “... I’m excited to see what we can do in 3A.”

Shelbyville is 6-1 against 3A opponents with the only loss coming by two points to Greenwood in December. The other two losses came Hoosier Heritage Conference rival Mt. Vernon (64-57) and Ben Davis (51-43), the latter in the championship of the Bob Wettig tournament in Richmond on New Year’s weekend.

The toughest test to date is upcoming on Saturday at 4A third-ranked Greenfield-Central and Mr. Basketball candidate Braylon Mullins. New Palestine will visit in mid-February in a potential sectional preview. But Badgley is confident. And this time, as he talks, Claxton is nodding, not smiling.

“I’m not scared of anybody,” Badgley said. “I’m ready to go in this game and I know everybody is going to bring it, too. It’s time for us to take it. There’s not a game I don’t think we can’t handle.”

NOTEBOOK:

HOOSIER NEWS: Fishers could become the first Indiana city to ban new rental properties in single-family subdivisions where at least 10% of homes already serve as rentals, a policy designed to curb the influx of large investors buying and leasing homes. The policy the Fishers City Council will consider this spring attempts to prevent rentals from overwhelming single-family home neighborhoods and to free up more houses for sale, Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness told IndyStar. Corporate investors now lease more than 40,000 single-family rental properties in Marion, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks and Johnson Counties, a Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana study published this month found. (IndyStar)
NATIONAL NEWS: According to data from Lightspeed systems analyzing the behavior of 2.8 million students in 344 school districts, the average American sixth grader spends 144 minutes on school-provided computing devices over the course of a given school day, and then another 27 minutes on those devices outside of school, presumably doing homework. (The Wall Street Journal/Numlock)
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SHS Courier Archive Highlights

May 11, 1966, Part I

Newly elected Student Council members were Linda Welage, Mike McKee, Neil Comstock, Darla Ensminger, Noell Worland, Jeff Walker, Marcia Dickman, Becky Brenton, Janice Roell, Saundra Pyle, Sallie Sears, Debbie Stine, Pam Beck, Debbie Bornhorst, Melissa Miller, Randy Meyerholtz, Susan Holtel, Warren Krebs, Bill Haehl, Bob Elliott, Robert Haas, John Gaines, Lisa Phares, Tom Schneider, Judy Christian, Candy Meloy, Christi Eads, Tim Conway, Dale Walton, Jenny Thurston, Larry Junken, Denise Karnowsky, Floyd Branson, Monique Cooper, Molly McKenney, Mandy Miller, Tim Ash, Jane Brennan, Bruce Williams and Mike Williams. David Carmony would be president for the class of 1967, with Margaret Haehl as vice president and Nancy Dellekamp as secretary-treasurer. junior class officers would be Duane Smith, Tim Ash and Jerry Moore.
The Courier applauded the SHS cheerleaders - Terri Koch, Rita Mitchell, Pam Beck, Barbara Scott, Saundra Pyle, Teresa Davis, Jane Brennan, Jean Brennan and Sara Bailey - for giving “a great boost of morale” throughout the year.
New parking spaces had been opened north of the regular parking lot. The new area had been leveled and graveled, but not paved. Emergency parking along the gravel road was no longer necessary, and late-comers should find space on the new lot, Mr. Boyd announced.
Cheryl Knoebel, class of 1962, was student-teaching with Mr. Phillips and Mr. Kuhn.
In alumni news, Knoebel had been elected president of Pi Beta Phi Sorority at Ball State, and Don Sexton had been elected president of Beta Theta Phi at BSU.

This Day in Shelby County History

News around Shelbyville and the surrounding area as reported on or about this date in history. Selections are curated by The Addison Times from Shelby County Public Library Genealogy Department materials.

2005: A record number of houses had been sold in Shelby County in 2004, with an increase of 13.8 percent over 2003. The average sales price had dropped 3.7 percent in 2004, lowering the price for the average home to $104,393. Many of those sales were for new houses sold directly through builders and builders’ representatives. Nancy Horton, of Guardian Realty, was moving her office at 233 Mechanic St. and moving her operation to Hickory Close subdivision, located south of Highpointe Blvd. off Amos Road. She planned to move home to home as each sold. The homes were in the $139,000 to $159,000 range.

1995: Evan Tingle, a former member of the Shelbyville Common Council and organizer of the Bears of Blue River Festival, filed to run in the Republican primary for mayor. Tingle came to Shelbyville in 1971 as manager of Paul’s Shoes on Public Square. He owned the business from 1978 to 1982. He also held managerial positions at the Elks Blue River Country Club and Hardee’s Restaurant. Tingle was the second to file on the Republican side, with Philip Banawitz also running.

1985: The State Bank of Waldron and Central Indiana Bank announced plans to merge, forming the Central Indiana Bank. The new bank would have assets in excess of $90 million, and would continue to keep the 65 total employees of both county banks. The new CIB would retain all its offices at St. Paul, Waldron, Fairland, Pleasant View and Shelbyville.

1975: The Shelbyville boys’ swimming team held a successful fund-raising Swim-a-thon to raise $2,422 for badly-needed lane ropes for the SHS pool. The goal had been to raise $1,000. “When (coach) Al Smith sets out to do something, he does it right,” The Shelbyville News said. The additional money was allocated to buying starting blocks. The top money earners were David Fleming, Stacey Lockridge and Kyle Lockridge. Those obtaining the most sponsors were Dan Oeffinger, Susan Polakoff and Elaine DeVoe.

1965: A major expansion planned for Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. was deferred. The expansion would have involved purchasing 10 acres, construction of more than 200,000 square feet of building space and installation of $1 million of machinery. Employment would have risen from 500 to 700 at the local plant. The company had just reported record sales in 1964, but officials cited “the unfavorable Shelbyville labor market” as a potential cause for the delay.

1955: Ernest Dean, 158 W. Mechanic St., and James Scudder, 237 Elizabeth St., were drafted into the armed services.

A Democrat-sponsored bill in the state legislature proposed that drivers could get a personalized license plate instead of prefixes and numerals for a $25 fee.

1945: Sixteen Shelby County men were inducted into military service: Charles Walker, Paul Nelson, Onas Sipes, William Vandiver, Roy Beaver, Carl Chambers, Robert Louden, Charles Street, Charles Henry, Billy Jamner, Robert Fox, Paul Deaton, Marion Moore, Dale Banta, Wayne Lee and Virgil Deaton.

Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Cockerham, 71 McKinley St., received two letters from their son, Lt. Edwin Cockerham, a prisoner of war in Germany, who said he was well. Lt. Cockerham was taken prisoner after being shot down over Germany. He had been the pilot of a B-17 bomber.

1935: Junior Sexton won a youth ping-pong tournament at First Baptist Church.

The Shelbyville Merchants Association officially formed. Officers were Allen Bennett, Dalton Spurlin and Frank Schoelch.

1925: Manilla and Homer alumni played in a “Stiff Knee” basketball game. Manilla won, 17-14.

1915: Editor’s note: There are no archives for either local Republican or Democrat newspapers for this week. Once the archive returns, reporting for this year will resume.