– Coach Norman Dale

A very kind St. Patrick’s Day wish to you all in this fine month of the calendar.

I am very fortunate having had three really good basketball coaches in my life, four if you count my dad (and I do). Arguably the fifth best basketball coach I ever had passed away at the age of 95 a few weeks ago. I never met him in person and I never actually played basketball for him. His real name was Gene Hackman, but his portrayal as the tough but tender Norman Dale, coach of the fictional Hickory Huskers in the 1986 film “Hoosiers,” was a very real coach for me and for many of us who grew up in the 80’s and who have carried their love of this coach and this film for nearly 40 years.

Sure he may have been a fictional coach with well written lines read off of a script, but it didn’t make him any less real to those of us who couldn’t and still can’t get enough of his one season and the miraculous run to the Indiana State high school basketball championship in 1952.

I was a sophomore in high school in November of 1986 when “Hoosiers” was released into theaters. The very first viewing I had was with my Norman High School basketball teammates several days after its’ release. With apologies to Dr. J and “The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh,” “Hoosiers” was (and still is) the finest basketball movie ever made. I remember watching it and thinking “I am ready to run through a wall to win a state basketball championship.” The Norman High Tigers were a really good team that year, but unfortunately we lost in the Area championship in spring of 1987.

Coach Dale was a coach not unlike thousands of other coaches of that era – a hard-nosed, passionate, teacher of the game unafraid to stand on his principles with a “my-way-or-the-highway” authoritarian leadership. It was certainly a different time and high school basketball was not a democracy. Basketball teams were run by coaches who demanded effort and required loyalty. Was it always a perfect system? Of course not. Times change, philosophies and style change, but I can’t say it’s better or worse. That is a matter of opinion. But it sure was different from today’s game that hails the “players’ coach” and finds nothing unusual about players who transfer from one year to another, from one high school to another, from one college to another all in search of something they themselves can’t quantify. Most don’t know what they want or what they need in a coach or school. Today makes 1952’s Hickory Huskers even more bizarre and peculiar when viewed through the lens of those who are barely old enough to drive or vote. Yes kids, coaches were once very demanding, yelled at you, and didn’t care a whole heck of a lot what you wanted. But if you cared, if you became part of a team, and if you put forth maximum effort then sometimes the reward was met with a gold trophy at the end of the season. Even when it wasn’t, there was still a reward just in the journey of trying to get there.

If you put your effort and concentration into playing to your potential, to be the best that you can be, I don’t care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game, in my book we’re gonna be winners”

The 1952 Hickory Huskers were based upon the 1954 Milan Indians. The Milan coach (Marvin Wood) was only 26 years of age and not a middle-aged coach with one last chance as was Hackman’s portrayal. Milan also had 10 players compared to Hickory’s seven (and a half if you include manager/hero Ollie; an event that was fictionalized by the movie). Milan was also coming off of a 1953 final four appearance at state the previous season. They didn’t exactly come out of nowhere to win the title in 1954.

“Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit: team, team, team – no one more important than the other.”

Milan did have a real life Jimmy Chitwood. His real name was Bobby Plump. Though he didn’t tell Coach Wood “I’ll make it” at the end of the real life championship game in 1954 against the larger, powerful Muncie Central Bearcats, the final 18 seconds did unfold just like in the movie.

Here is the real life Jimmy Chitwood, Bobby Plump, with his game winner in 1954…

Bobby Plump went on to play college ball at Butler University in the same Hinkle Fieldhouse on Butler’s campus where the championship game took place. After his time at Butler, Plump played three seasons (1958-61) in Bartlesville, Oklahoma for the AAU powerhouse Phillips 66ers. In one of those “small world” coincidences, my dad Jim Kerwin also played for Phillips for six seasons beginning in 1964. I’ve always thought this to be a great connection knowing that my dad met and knew Bobby Plump from the numerous Phillips reunions which used to be held every year after the team disbanded following the 1968 season.

(Note the “Standing” and “Kneeling” are backwards above. My dad, Jim Kerwin, kneeling #30)

RIP Gene Hackman. RIP Coach Norman Dale.

God needs you on the bench.

sincerely,

the80s