La Porte (3,956) Built 1976
February 8, 2025: South Bend Riley vs. South Bend Washington (Girls)
February 8, 2025: South Bend Riley vs. South Bend Washington (Girls)
Small rural schools in certain pockets of southern Indiana like to claim that they are the most underrated and overlooked area in the state when it comes to high school basketball coverage. Many of these schools are difficult to get to geographically, and there is a perception that people don't even know they exit. If they do, then they don't bother to spotlight or recognize their accomplishments. It's a bit of an inferiority complex that I think is unwarranted in the age of social media where anyone with a smart phone can shine a light on whatever they wish. I am constantly seeing videos and posts about the many great basketball programs we have in the smaller communities in the south. I'm glad they're getting the attention they deserve. The one area of the state that I think actually has a gripe with getting overlooked is the northwest. There have been many storied programs and small town successes in this region, but I feel like I hear almost nothing about them these days, and I'm someone who is on every single Facebook group, website, and message board dedicated to Indiana high school basketball. If it's out there, I'll see it. Yet I hardly come across anything about schools in the northwestern corner of Indiana. When I was back home in LaGrange County last week, I wanted to make at least one trek down US-20 to see a game in this area. I landed on the girls sectional championship between South Bend Riley and South Bend Washington in La Porte (which I just now discovered is not spelled Laporte). It was a good game in a mostly empty, but pretty nice gym.
The empty gym is not an indictment of the passion of La Porte Slicer fans. It was a girls sectional game between two visiting schools on a night when I drove through an ice storm to get to the game. I have no clue how full the gym typically gets on a Friday night for an actual La Porte game. With that being said, in Dale Lawrence's essential Hoosier Hysteria Road Book, he points out that fan support in the northwest has taken the biggest hit in probably the entire state. For whatever reason, it has just fallen off a cliff at many schools. Again, I don't know if La Porte is one of these places. What I do know is that the fans who do still come out have had plenty to cheer for over the years. 28 sectionals, 8 regionals, and 2 semistate title have been captured on just the boys side alone. They've had some legends of the game come through this gym in particular like Steve Drabyn, Eric Dolezal, and to my surprise as an IWU grad, Greg Tonagel. There's a lot of history here, and the gym feels like a grand monument to it all.
Coming in at just under 4,000 seats, the La Porte gym feels even bigger. There is seating on all four sides, but the sideline sections carry the vast majority of the load. The sidelines each feature two levels of gorgeous old wooden bleachers. There are 11 rows on the bottom and 17 on the top. This seems pretty standard, but there are some quirks. On one side, the upper bleachers reach back up all the way against the back wall, while on the other side there is a safety railing at the top as there is about 15 feet of space between the bleachers and the wall. Also, the upper bleachers on each side have each seat individually numbered with lines painted on them to give each spectator's posterior a clear landing zone when sitting down. The lower wooden bleachers are completely bereft of this. The upper level is easily navigated with a concourse connecting both sideline sections, though it was roped off for sectionals for safety purposes I'm assuming (as if a quarter inch strand of rope is going to impede a biligerent fan hellbent on causing chaos with someone from the other side of the gym). A short indoor track runs all the way around the concourse as well. On the upper baseline level across from the entrance to the gym is a narrow section of retractable wooden bleachers that go up about 10 rows. It was rolled up for sectionals which makes me wonder if it ever gets used at all. The opposing side has a ton of empty space between the railing and the back wall which makes me assume there was originally a matching set of bleachers on this side as well. The corners and baseline ends of the upper level all feel very open in general.
The bleachers are the focal point of the gym here, but there is a lot more to discuss. High above, nearly in the rafters on the baseline sides, are rectangular athletic accomplishment banners. They're pretty modern, but black and orange always works as a color scheme and they look pretty good. Directly below them, running underneath the safety rail of the upper level, are thin Duneland Conference team banners. It's an interesting way to display them. This is the case along both baselines, meaning they have two identical conference displays on each end. That's a new one for me. At this same eye level are big scoreboards in two corners of the gym, and press box booths in the other two. The baseline section by the main entrance also has the typical Indiana All-Star jersey displays honoring past greats hanging on the safety rail. The lower level has two sections of baseline seats that go up about 8 rows. The wall all along the floor level is a beautiful burnt orange. I really enjoy the court design here. The perimeter is all black, with "La Porte" written along the baselines in orange, outlined in white. Center court has a big orange "L" that is painted on with a flourish and "Slicers" written across it also with some flair. It's gorgeous. The DAC conference logo is painted right inside the free throw lines. The insides of the three point wings are painted solid orange which looks really vibrant. I dig it. The rest of the floor is all a nice light tan color. There's too much space between the sidelines and the bottom of the bleachers but I'm almost becoming immune to it in gyms at this point.
Another gym, another place I wish I could visit at full capacity. As I sat in the very top row looking into the rafters of the low ceiling, I thought about Bob Hammel's book Hoosiers Classified which is about the last year of one-class basketball. La Porte made it all the way to the final four that year before losing to Delta. I thought about what it must have been like to follow that team all year in this gym. How meaningful that run must have been to the community. How people probably still talk about it to this day, about how incredible it was, and what could have been if the ball had bounced their way one or two more times during that game. I thought about one of my favorite anecdotes in the Hoosier Hysteria Road Book about La Porte's old coach Joe Otis and his response to the IHSAA when class basketball was first proposed (I'll let you find the book the and read it, it's well worth your time). I thought about the new transfer rules that are about to be voted on in the next few weeks and how they're likely to change high school basketball for the worse, again. I don't think attendance will be affected one way or the another, all the casuals are already gone at this point anyways. If you're going to Indiana high school basketball games in 2025, it's either because you still love the game and tradition, or you have family playing. The new rules will mostly affect coaches and their ability to built a program the right way from the ground up. It's just another change. One that I'll bemoan, but won't alter my love for visiting these old places, even if they're near empty. That will never change.
