‘You’re in a different world’: Suburban teams enjoy old-school hoops in the ‘Hoosiers’ gym

It’s the Field of Dreams of high school basketball — the Hoosier Gym in Knightstown, Indiana.

It’s open for games, too, at a decent price. The boys basketball teams of Antioch, Neuqua Valley, Glenbrook South and Plainfield East on Jan. 3 got the chance to play on the home court of the fictional Hickory Huskers from the movie, “Hoosiers,” which filmed scenes at the former Knightstown High School about 20 miles east of Indianapolis.

“When you walk in you almost feel like you’re in the movie,” said Antioch coach Sean Connor, approached by Glenbrook South coach Phil Ralston to play a nonconference game there.

Connor coached Geneva’s sophomore team in 2009-10 early in Ralston’s outstanding run as varsity coach from 2008-17. On Saturday Connor beat his old boss 42-38, though outcomes at the Hoosier Gym are almost beside the point.

“It was really just a friendly game,” said Neuqua Valley coach Todd Sutton, also recruited by his fellow Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame friend Ralston for the 10 a.m. slot at the Hoosier Gym, followed two hours later by Antioch-Glenbrook South.

“By far the most amazing basketball experience I’ve seen in 40 years,” Sutton said. “When you’re greeted by the Hoosiers volunteer people in the parking lot they’ve got their Hoosiers gear on, and you see the Hoosiers bus in the parking lot, you’re in a different world. You’re back in 1952.”

On the sideline as Gene Hackman’s “Norman Dale” would be and assisted by his son, Tyler — Todd Sutton gave him a Hickory T-shirt “from Shooter,” the townie-assistant coach played by Dennis Hopper — his Wildcats beat Plainfield East 77-56.

“Hoosiers” was based on Indiana’s real-life “Milan Miracle” of 1954, when tiny Milan High School beat big Muncie Central to win the single-class state title.

The Illinois equivalent, of course, is the 1951-52 Hebron High School team that beat mighty Quincy to win state.

Antioch’s Connor has only a couple degrees of separation from that. He served as a basketball manager for Rob Judson at Northern Illinois University. Judson’s father, Phil, played on that Hebron team.

Antioch also visited the New Castle Fieldhouse, also in “Hoosiers” and acknowledged as the world’s largest high school basketball gym at 8,424 seats. Connor took the team to watch a game there the night before playing in the Hoosier Gym.

Basketball shrines like the 105-year-old Knightstown landmark can make coaches feel like kids again.

“We’ve played at Quincy,” Sutton said, “but it doesn’t compare to the Hoosier Gym. If you look at it, it’s the greatest high school gym in America.”

An original

The man who started the boys gymnastics program at Naperville Central High School, Tom Temple, died Dec. 23 at 87 years old.

A member of Michigan State’s 1958 NCAA championship team, in 1969 Temple began a 26-year coaching career at then-Naperville High School. His teams went to state finals in 1979 and 1983 and placed third in state in 1994, his final season.

“Very kind and patient,” said Tom Wehrli, who told us about Temple’s passing in Alabama. A 1971 graduate, Wehrli was on Temple’s first three Naperville teams, a trampolinist like his coach was as a boy in Saginaw, Michigan.

“’Patient’ was the key thing to being a coach, I guess,” Wehrli said. “He would do anything for you. He let me drive his car, an old Saab, when we lived next door to him.”

An Army helicopter pilot, in 1962 Temple provided perimeter surveillance at the University of Mississippi when James Meredith became the first Black student to attend school there, according to the obituary provided by his wife, Patricia.

Glen Reimers coached with Temple his last nine seasons before Reimers’ own successful run as Redhawks girls coach from 1986-2019.

Reimers said Temple put his assistants in positions to succeed, having them coach their specialties or, if that wasn’t possible, teaching them “basics to build on” in another apparatus.

“He was a great mentor,” Reimers said. “He always wanted you to do better as a coach, and he was very big into family.”

A physical education teacher like Temple, Reimers recalled that in his first year at Naperville Central he had to teach soccer. Having no prior experience in the sport, Reimers was afraid his students would figure that out and “run all over me.”

Temple came to the rescue. “He just showed me the ropes,” Reimers said.

Reimers and his wife, Chris, visited the Temples at their Alabama home in March 2024. The old coach looked great, Reimers said.

“He sure didn’t look 85.”

Others may remember Temple as if frozen in time, in that spring of 1994.

“We had such a great year,” Reimers said, “that’s the year the boys team took third in state. That was awesome. Just to see him shine and how happy he was with everybody.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com