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Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Editors' Cut: Lapel girls basketball
Central Indiana, IN
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Months ago, we set our plans for our February and March covers. Obviously, we wanted something to do with basketball, since this tends to be a slightly crazed basketball state.
With the girls state tournament beginning this month, our team here at HSSTM thought it appropriate to hearken back to the feel of small town basketball. And for the girls, there wasn’t a better story than Lapel.
As you can tell from the story, it’s one of those places where everyone knows your middle name, the car you drive and where you were on Saturday night. Lapel is a classic small town in Indiana, set out in the middle of corn and soybean fields – and they’re absolutely crazy about their hoops.
One of the most interesting parts of the Lapel story to me was the school’s attachment to the old gymnasium. At semester break, the students moved into a brand new (and breathtaking) high school. This meant they had to bid adieu to the old one – including the gym – which opened in 1953.
I didn’t set out for the modern-day Hickory angle, but when girls basketball coach (and Lapel grad) Kevin Brattain told me the story of the Bulldogs final game at the old gym in December, it seemed like it should be the end of a sports movie.
In unison, the girls and the coaches bent down and kissed the Bulldog at center court. Brattain got teary-eyed just telling me story.
“It was homey there,” said junior Courtney Prater.
And that’s the closeness Lapel has with its school and its basketball.
“We’ve got devoted fans throughout the season,” says junior guard Elizabeth Jennings. “I like it, because we can put on a show for them – and personally, I run off the crowd. When the crowd’s into it, you feed off that.”
There’s also a closeness between team members that I found to be not only interesting, but highly entertaining.
For example, Jennings and senior forward Kayla Skaggs (who transferred from Heritage Christian two seasons ago) used to be rivals on the AAU circuit. I asked them if they were friends back then. They called it “friendly and intense,” but acknowledge they were hardly close.
“Well, she was aggressive,” said Jennings, her eyes widening.
When Skaggs came to Lapel, Jennings breathed a sigh of relief: “I knew I didn’t like playing against her, so if I had her on the same team, it made life a lot easier.”
And the easier things are, the better. The girls relax before games by listening to music, like many teams do, but they put a twist on it.
As Prater tells it, “We start things off with ‘Spice Girls,’ then we [the six juniors] lie down on the floor, turn off the lights and listen to classic ‘Queen’ – you know, We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions.”
That might a slight upgrade from last season, when they did the cha-cha slide at the end of their games.
But the nerves don’t necessarily go away with the music. Prater said she gets really nervous before the national anthem, “because it means the game is starting and we’ve got work to do.”
Skaggs added, “Yeah, the anthem feels like its 10 minutes long!”
They’ve seemed to have gotten over the stomach-turning moments before the game, just fine. Heading into sectionals, Lapel was 20-2, winners of nine straight games.
And they seemed less than concerned about moving up to Class 2A this season than they do playing to their potential every night.
As Skaggs told me, “The better teams we play throughout the season can only make us better.”
With the girls basketball state tournament beginning this week, the ladies at Lapel are ready to experience more of what they did last year – a deep tournament run. In 2006-07, Lapel advanced to semistate before falling to eventual state champion Oregon-Davis.
Jennings said she craves another opportunity to advance to the state finals. “I’d watched my sister, Andrea, play here and they went to the Final Four in 2000,” she said. “The crowds were unbelievable and I told myself then I wanted to play in front of a crowd like that.”
Skaggs wants that chance, too. “I got goose bumps all the time last year during postseason; the tournament is easily the most exciting time of the year.”
The Bulldogs could run into two-time defending Class 2A state champion Heritage Christian, Skaggs’ old team, in regionals.
It would be an appropriate part of the Lapel story, befitting small town theatrics and Hoosier Hysteria.
The kind of story that makes you believe that Indiana basketball is just as good now as it always was.
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