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Indiana University Press - Mike Roos

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173 pages

English

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2014 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection

Connect with the author and book: Mike Roos on Twitter Mike Roos's website One Small Town, One Crazy Coach on Facebook Related video: Ireland Spuds 40th Anniversary Video

In the summer of 1962, the peripatetic and irrepressible Pete Gill was hired on a whim to coach basketball at tiny Ireland High School. There he would accomplish, against enormous odds, one of the great small-town feats in Indiana basketball history. With no starters taller than 5'10", few wins were predicted for the Spuds. Yet, after inflicting brutal preseason conditioning, employing a variety of unconventional motivational tactics, and overcoming fierce opposition, Gill molded the Spuds into a winning team that brought home the town's first and only sectional and regional titles. Relying on narrative strategies of creative nonfiction rather than strict historical rendering, Mike Roos brings to life a colorful and varied cast of characters and provides a compelling account of their struggles, wide-ranging emotions, and triumphs throughout the season.

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Publié par	Indiana University Press
Date de parution	17 septembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9780253010353
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

One Small Town, One Crazy Coach is a piece of Indiana basketball history that reawakens memories of the glory days of high school teams in Southern Indiana.
- CHRIS MAY , Executive Director, Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame
Fifty years ago the term Hoosier Hysteria had a truly special meaning and a band of Spuds solidified it. In short, Mike Roos s work about this unique team and special time is a must read! Any true Hoosier will be taken to a better place!
- JERRY REYNOLDS , Director of Player Personnel and Broadcaster for NBA Sacramento Kings
For anyone who grew up in this basketball crazy state One Small Town, One Crazy Coach is a must read. Mike Roos takes us on a wonderful trip back to when Hoosier Basketball was the ONLY game in town not just a story about High School Hoops but an inside look at that glorious era when Indiana Boys basketball meant everything to an entire community.
- MIKE BLAKE , NBC Sports Commentator
Many of the schools Ireland High School played in 1962-1963 disappeared in the consolidation rush of the 1970s. Mike Roos grew up in this world ( the golden age of Indiana high school basketball ), his father was the principal of Ireland High School during its trip to the promised land, and he knows basketball inside and out. I can t imagine anyone more qualified than Mr. Roos to bring Indiana high school basketball history to life-especially in this the 50th anniversary year. His is indeed an original-and valuable-work.
- DON DAIKER , Emeritus Professor of English, Miami University, Oxford
Mike Roos has captured for basketball fans and general readers alike the essence of what Indiana basketball and small-town life was all about in the 1960s. Along the way, there s lots of string music that will send readers right back to a bygone golden era of Hoosier Hysteria.
- JOE DEAN , Color Commentator for SEC basketball
A great tribute to Coach Pete Gill and the 1963 Ireland Spuds. It is a message of faith as a crazy coach leads an underdog team to high achievements against all odds. This book is a true picture of what small-town basketball was like in southern Indiana in 1963, and the power of small-town spirit.
- DON BUSE , Former ABA and NBA All Star, Indiana Pacers
Mike Roos cleverly articulates the trials and tribulations faced by all small-town Indiana basketball coaches during an era of Hoosier Hysteria when against all odds, little-known high schools became legendary in defeating those larger schools that routinely dominated the game. Relive one such unpredictable quest orchestrated by Pete Gill s motivational style and executed by the 1963 Ireland Spud players who believed in their coach.
- JACK BUTCHER , Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame
Mike Roos s One Small Town, One Crazy Coach is a wonderful addition to the literature of the only game that matters in the Hoosier state. Fans of Hoosiers and John Feinstein s A Season on the Brink will discover not simply a tale of Davids taking on Goliaths but a tribute to the villages and hamlets of the Midwest, many of whose home high schools disappeared thanks to public-school consolidation in the 1970s. The minute Ireland s gentle giant principal, Jim Roos-the author s father-hires the raw, impassioned Pete Gill to lead the Spuds, readers also know they re meeting one of the all-time characters in coaching-a man with a peculiar mixture of discipline and impulse, and one given to spectacle. The iconic moment Gill tosses his trousers into the stands captures the sheer exhilaration of victory-a rightful reminder that winning is as much about giddy absurdity as sentimental triumph.
- KIRK CURNUTT , author of Breathing Out the Ghost, winner of the 2008 Best Books of Indiana Award for Best Novel
Memories of 50 years ago After reading the book, Pete [Gill] was crazier than I imagined.
- JIM JONES , Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame Coach
One Small Town, One Crazy Coach is an outstanding book that reflects the true passion of high school basketball in Indiana and its impact on a community. This story is a clear expression of a coach and his team s unwavering belief in accomplishing something special. You ll thoroughly enjoy following the 1963
Ireland Spuds as they chase their piece of Indiana Basketball History.
- MICHAEL LEWIS , Assistant Coach, Butler University
ONE SMALL TOWN, ONE CRAZY COACH

ONE SMALL TOWN, ONE CRAZY COACH

The Ireland Spuds and the 1963 Indiana High School Basketball Season
Mike Roos
This book is a publication of
Quarry Books
an imprint of
Indiana University Press
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
2013 by Michael Roos
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roos, Mike.
One small town, one crazy coach : the Ireland Spuds and the 1963 Indiana high school basketball season / Mike Roos.
pages cm.
ISBN 978-0-253-01028-5 (pb : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01035-3 (ebook) 1. Basketball-Indiana-History. 2. High school sports-Indiana-History. I. Title.
GV885.72.I6R66 2013.
796.32309772-dc23
2013011318
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
FOR MY PARENTS ,
Jim and Betty Roos,
AND FOR
Pete Gill, Red Keusch,
and all the Ireland Spuds of 1963
Thine was the prophet s vision, thine
The exaltation, the divine
Insanity of noble minds,
That never falters nor abates,
But labors and endures and waits,
Till all that it foresees it finds
Or what it can not find creates.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Keramos
In 49 states it s just basketball . But this is Indiana!
-Anonymous
Contents
PREFACE
1 Gloomsday
2 No Irish in Ireland
3 Neither a Drunkard Nor a Bank Robber
4 Baptisms
5 Turkey Run and the White Horse Tavern
6 A Wop and a Wimp and a Moon
7 Too Much Is Not Enough
8 Life under the Knife
9 Ice Man
10 Your Blood, Your Sweat, Your Tears
11 Drill, Baby, Drill!
12 Soap and Towel and Wings of Fire
13 Highway 61 Revisited
14 The Buy In
15 Devil in Blue Jeans
16 Coal for Christmas
17 I d Like to Teach the World to Sing
18 Of Jeeps and Giants
19 The Dude
20 Preliminaries
21 Walk Like a Man
22 The Prophet s Vision
23 Divine Insanity
24 Keep Your Pants On
25 The Axe Just Fell
26 Fame
27 Small Potatoes
28 Invasion of the Little Green Men
EPILOGUE
Preface
This book has been a ten-year a labor of love-or fifty years, if you care to go back to the beginning. My father was in his second year as principal of Ireland High School, and I an eleven-year-old fifth grader, when the Ireland Spuds made the Sweet Sixteen of Indiana High School basketball in 1963. I was present for most of the games involved and regarded these people as my heroes and source of inspiration, a flame that has never died. In 2003, I attended the fortieth anniversary celebration of the Spuds accomplishment and recognized that this was a story someone needed to preserve and share with the world. My only regret is that it took me so long to hear the calling.
However, the book is neither a memoir of my own experiences (which would not be very interesting) nor a straight historical account of a magical season. In setting this story down for posterity, I wanted as much as possible to recreate as vividly as possible those long-lost times, which will never return, and the extraordinary people involved, and so I decided to employ some of the techniques of fiction in bringing the story to life. While all the significant events in this book are factual and true, at times I have reimagined moments and conversations in order for the characters to breathe more freely and appear to live on the page. In all of these recreations, I have made every effort to stay true to the spirit of the events and the personalities involved. I hope my methods not only make for a more enjoyable reading experience but also enable you to feel more powerfully the emotions of the characters.
Those emotions were indeed powerful, as anyone who went through the experience can attest. Why so? And why is this story worth the telling? There are several reasons. It s true, the Spuds did not win the state championship as did Milan in 1954, the only truly small school ever to accomplish the feat while the Indiana state tournament was still a winner-take-all one-class tournament. But let s not forget that the Milan accomplishment was no fluke. In 1954, the Milan squad was making its second consecutive appearance in the Final Four, with most of the same players who were there the year before. Milan demonstrated its greatness as a team by having to go through the Indianapolis Semi-State and defeating big school powerhouses like a young Oscar Robertson s Indianapolis Attucks team. In 1954, both Bobby Plump and Ray Craft made the Indiana All-State Team, and both went on to play four years and star at Butler University. Plump set Butler scoring records and became one of the NCAA s all-time best free throw shooters. In short, the Milan team did not overachieve. It was a worthy state champion and deserves all the glory it has received in Indiana basketball lore.
But I would argue that the odds against what the Ireland Spuds accomplished in 1963 were much greater than those against Milan in 1954. First, the population of th