Muda69 Posted January 24, 2025 Posted January 24, 2025 https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/high-school/2025/01/24/clay-city-vs-bloomfield-small-school-indiana-high-school-basketball-at-its-best-ihsaa-class-a/77913179007/?tbref=hp Quote BLOOMFIELD, Ind. – Long after the fans left the gym on a bitter cold winter night, Michael Hayes was just beginning his custodial duties when I asked him if he could show me the “old” gym at Bloomfield High School. We walked upstairs and looked around a bit at the photos on the walls outside the old gym — it was dedicated Jan. 6, 1928, when Bloomfield defeated Switz City 45-24 — and Hayes showed me where kids would sit in the balcony with their feet dangling over the court below. The balcony is not there anymore, but the memories are. Team photos of Bloomfield’s two boys basketball regional championship teams under Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame coach Guy Glover, one from 1961 and the other from 1965, hang on opposite ends of the gym. This, too, is where one of the first girls basketball state powers called home. Melissa and Melinda Miles led those Bloomfield teams to back-to-back state finals appearances, never losing a regular-season game, in the first two years of the girls tournament in 1976 and ’77. They lost to Judi Warren and Warsaw in the state championship in ’76 and to LaTaunya Pollard and East Chicago Roosevelt in the afternoon game of the state finals the next year. I discuss some of those topics with Hayes, then tell him I’ll let him get back to work. “Work?” Hayes replies. “I don’t like to use that word.” He says he enjoys the time alone working at night, then shouts “Hickory!” down the empty hallway, mimicking the movie “Hoosiers” when the players visit Hinkle Fieldhouse for the first time. Hayes bleeds Bloomfield. He drives the team bus, washes jerseys and runs the scoreboard at home games. A throwback. That word might describe the setting for Wednesday night’s showdown between visiting and Class A top-ranked Clay City and No. 4 Bloomfield. Fans parked along the streets outside Bloomfield’s Guy Glover gym to see two of the state’s best small-school teams in a makeup of a game pushed back by the snowstorm earlier this month. ...... Great story by Mr. Neddenriep. I wish I could have attended this one. 1 Quote
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