Hamilton Southeastern (3,520) Built 1989
June 3, 2024: Indiana Futures All-Star Game North vs. South (Boys)
June 3, 2024: Indiana Futures All-Star Game North vs. South (Boys)
Nothing says high school basketball like a hot summer day right after school lets out in June does it? I know when I think of Hoosier Hysteria the first thing that comes to mind is a bunch of elite players who have never played with one another before trading awful threes over the course of two 20-minute halves, or driving to the game and departing while it's still light out. Okay, while maybe this night didn't provide the quintessential Indiana basketball experience, it was still basketball in a gym in Indiana. It counts! And for this basketball-starved teacher who wanted to get summer off on the right foot, it was just what I needed. The quality of basketball on this lovely June evening matched the quality of the gym in which it was played. The Indiana Futures All-Star game was being held for both the boys and girls at Hamilton Southeastern high school. The best freshman and sophomores in the northern and southern halves of the state squared off back to back. While the effort on the defensive end was considerably better than what you would find at the professional level, the offensive creativity was pretty bleak. It was still neat to see so much of the upcoming talent in the state all in one place.
HSE is a school with very little basketball tradition to speak of. It's a consolidation of a couple former Hamilton County schools which has only produced 3 sectional titles since the inception of class basketball and none prior to that. The gym that they play in is about as a bleak as their track record. They've named themselves the "Royals" (as only a Hamilton County school would), but their gym is much closer to a cracker box than a palace. Both baseline walls have large, matching signage proclaiming the name of their mascot in navy blue lettering accented in grey. The baseline walls seem to extend forever. One of them displays endless athletic accomplishment banners. While there hasn't been much to write home about on the basketball court over the years, they've had a lot of success in other sports. Underneath the standard banners are numerous state championship and runner up plaques in the shape of Indiana. The runner up displays are in red (?) and everything else is the same deep navy blue. The opposing side has a common but clear Hoosier Crossroads Conference display (Carmel missing from the rest of these teams is just silly). This baseline side along with both sidelines have a lot of blank white wall space.
The one big positive thing I can say about the gym here is that they actually did the reverse of what is now common, and they switched from hideous, beige plastic bleachers to new wooden ones recently. Credit to them, it makes a big difference. The double handrails in each section of stairs along with the stairs on the very ends of each side of bleachers still look weird, but overall it's a big improvement. The gym has two matching sections of sideline bleachers, each with about 25 rows with no break. They look clean, modern, and don't have an obscene distance between the bottom row and the out of bounds line. The court design unfortunately falls pretty short. "Southeastern" is written across both baselines in navy blue with no "Hamilton" anywhere. Royals is written along the volleyball lines in the same fashion. Grey is everywhere and it just doesn't pop in any way. The worst part though is the center court logo. I don't exactly know how a bear head equates to a "Royal" in any way, but that's besides the point here. I can't tell if the bear looks cartoonishly constipated or laughing uncontrollably. Either way, it's probably not the vibe I would've been going for. (Edit: My wife thinks it might be a lion, which makes more sense with "Royals," but further proves how awful it is that we can't even tell). It's hideous.
Hamilton County schools are never going to do nostalgia very well. With the unending resources they have, you would hope they would do everything else well. Carmel and Noblesville are great examples. Everything about HSE falls short. The new wooden bleachers perk it up just a little bit, it's still about as antiseptic as they come. I've read the works of some people who love this stuff as much as I do, and they just rail against the multipurpose gyms that began popping up everywhere in the mid-60s into the 70s. They just think that they suck all the soul out of the basketball enviornment. I largely disagree with them in many cases as I've been to dozens of these facilities and many are teaming with life. That's not the case here sadly, and it's not just because a summer All-Star game was being played. It felt the same when I attended a mostly full regular season game against Anderson a couple years ago. It's a reminder that when you have the chance to do something new, find some ways to at least make it unique and special.
