*I joined this group over two months ago and as a former player and coach in Illinois I have enjoyed the many great posts that have been shared.

As an “ole” timer, I especially enjoy reminiscing of years gone by. I’ve shared a couple about my experiences in growing up in Galatia in Southern Illinois and playing against so many outstanding high school players in the 1960’s. I later coached at Salem during the late 70’s against outstanding coaches in the North Egypt Conference like Ron Felling, Ron Herrin, and Harold Poole to name a few. I have particularly enjoyed the many posts about the memorable high school gyms throughout Illinois. I have been fortunate to have either played in some of them like Eldorado, Harrisburg, Ridgway, West Frankfort or coached in others like Centralia, Mt. Vernon, Lawrenceville, and our home gym Salem. But there is one thing that has caught my eye when I see pictures of these beautiful and historic high school gyms; they don’t have any fans in the seats.

I saw a picture recently of the beautiful Thornton High School gym and the historic West Frankfort gym and they were less than half full for a boys’ basketball game. I have seen newspaper accounts of the games along with pictures of places like Carbondale, Marion, Harrisburg and several more that played in half empty gyms. These were/are great traditional programs, so my question is, where are the fans? I have friends who live in Southern Illinois that tell me that even the great boys’ basketball programs like Centralia, Mt. Vernon, Pinckneyville, and Benton do not have crowds like in the “glory days”. Before I retired in 2008 from coaching at Bloomingdale High School in Florida I was constantly trying to promote and get our students to come to our games. We had over 3,000 students and were in an area of over 25,000 people but still would have a thousand or less at a game. But Florida and the Tampa area are football first, second and third sports fans. It is not high school basketball crazy Illinois, at least that is the way I remember it.

When I played in the 60’s against teams like Shawneetown, Ridgway, Cave-in-Rock we would have a packed gym. We only had 150-200 students, and in towns of 1,000 people, but the fans turned out. In my last post I shared about playing in the Saline County Tournament (Harrisburg, Eldorado, Carrier Mills and Galatia) and how the two-day tournament would draw over 4,000 fans. I have been gone since 1979 and have heard that the Christmas tournaments like the ones at Eldorado and Centralia have great crowds. I am sure there are places where the fans still pack the gyms, but I don’t think it is like the “good ole days”. I don’t mean to be critical of any school, or certainly any of the coaches at these schools, maybe the best explanation is that it is just a sign of the times.

Maybe, I’m just an old man living in the past, but if you love high school basketball, as I do, I can smile and say I lived in the best of times. My last high school basketball game was in the West Frankfort Regional against a great player named Bob Brown. It was the David vs. Goliath story in high school basketball. We had 140 students, West Frankfort had about 1,000. The gym had over 2,000 fans in the seats, including representatives from the U. of Illinois, Mississippi State, Houston, Southern Illinois, Dayton, Memphis State, Murray State, and Bradley. There is no place in the world that I would rather have been that winter night in February of 1962. Super Bowl, to many of those fan’s seating in Max Morris gym, this was BETTER than the Super Bowl! thebasketballgoat.com *I wrote this for the basketball site Illinois High School Basketball History.