Rosedale (850?) Built 1956
March 16, 2026
March 16, 2026
When I was in elementary school, the head coach at Westview held a basketball camp every summer along with his brother and cousins. They were all Yoder's, so naturally it was called "Yoder Camp." As a fellow Yoder myself, I thought that was pretty cool. The camp was pretty intense for elementary kids. It was 2-3 hours a day for five days and we were coached and talked to like high school kids (every year we were told to throw away our video game consoles because they made us soft and to practice ball handling more instead). Every day they ran us through a battery of contests or drills and kept a running score throughout the week to track awards at the end of the camp. One of the drills was called Hot Shot, which was a shooting drill where you would get points for making shots at various spots around the court in a certain amount of time. I was never the quickest kid, but I was tall and I could shoot a little bit. Hot Shot was the one drill I felt like I could win, and I managed to do it a couple of years at the camp. This is the only time I've ever really heard or used the term "hot shot." It feels like one of those antiquated terms kids would have used on the playground in the 50s. "Man, Johnny's a real hot shot out there on the baseball diamond." It's in the same vein as saying the new James Dean film is the "cat's pajamas." While it may be a little outdated, it makes an absolute killer nickname for a basketball team. Enter the Rosedale Hot Shots.
Rosedale is situated at the far southern tip of Parke County, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite places to visit in the whole state. It may seem like a sleepy little town, but the Hot Shots have been torching the nets here since at least 1919 when they first participated in the IHSAA tournament. They won their first sectional in 1926, a second in 1952, and a third and final in 1984 just two years before they consolidated with Montezuma into Riverton Parke. I'm not sure I've seen a school with three sectional championships spaced out so evenly between the 20s and 80s. Winning just one sectional for a school this size was a big deal, nabbing three of them was certainly no small feat. The Hot Shots started playing in this school and gym in 1956. I haven't been able to find a lot of history about the school in general, and if anyone can tell me where the previous school or gym sat before this one was built, I would love to know! Since the high school folded in 1986, the gym has dutifully served Rosedale Elementary ever since. With Montezuma Elementary closing this year and rural schools facing more and more challenges every year, I hope Rosedale Elementary is able to defy the odds and soldier on. I stopped by on an unseasonably cold March afternoon just as the snow was starting to fall, and it was easy to feel the charm that this place holds.
Rosedale's gym has a classic 50's style with curved beams that start at the gym floor, rise straight up, and then curve up to the center point of the roof. The beams are metal instead of wooden. High up on the walls between these beams are long windows made up of little square glass blocks that let in a lot of natural light and look really neat. Underneath those windows are retractable bleachers along each sideline. Gyms built in the 50s had permanent bleachers half the time and old school retractable ones half the time, so I'm not sure what this gym had originally. I don't think any of the bleachers here today are original. On one sideline are 7 rows of wooden retractable bleachers that are pretty standard for an elementary school gym. The opposing side has 6 rows of black and yellow plastic bleachers that are definitely more modern. I don't love plastic bleachers but these actually look pretty sharp.
The hardwood floor here was either replaced or redone semi-recently. It has a very shiny new look to it that you don't see in any gym floor that's 70 years old, even after it's restained and refinished. It's a lighter tan color with a big black block letter "R" at center-court. "Rosedale" is written across one baseline and "Hot Shots" across the other in a font that matches the "R" at center-court. All of this is fine and dandy, but I've left the best part for last. Across from the main entrance to the gym is a grand old stage that thankfully hasn't been filled in. It has a pretty lavender curtain that spans the whole length of the stage and is framed in by some gorgeous red brick on three sides. The old locker rooms sit to the sides of the stage behind the baseline wall. Above the stage hang maybe the best banners I've ever seen in an old gym. The banners start above the corners of the stage and follow the angle of the roofline up to a point in the center. The center banner says "Rosedale H.S. Home Of The Hotshots." All of them are old school cloth banners, black with yellow lettering and trim. The surrounding banners recognize sectional titles, conference championships, county tournament championships, and Wabash Valley tournament accomplishments. They look perfect hanging up there, and I hope they're never altered in any way.
I was fortunate enough to see the gym while the school was on spring break in March. The hallways were pretty dark since students weren't there, and I was straining my eyes to check out the trophy case located right outside the gym. It was neat to see old pictures from teams in the 40s interspersed with memorabilia up through the 80s. Schools like Rosedale and Montezuma who survived as high schools into the 80s and have lived on as elementaries since then have unique histories. I wish I could find a little more about them online or talk with people who lived through the early years or when the schools ended up consolidating. Regardless, it was neat to see some of the old traditions just through the lens of the gym. As I headed home on I-70 just as the last big snowstorm of winter was starting, I was thankful for another meaningful day of gym hunting. Learning about these little towns and their schools will never get old to me. Their stories will never stop leaving an impression on me. I hope these blogs can shed just a little bit of light not just on the gyms, but the people that inhabited them.
