High school basketball was king in Indiana when I arrived in 1970.

It was at that point the only state that still had all of its schools playing in a one-class tournament, crowning a single champion.

Some of the state's high school gyms seated more people than many college basketball arenas - and they were full and raucous on game nights.

One of the first stories I heard after starting my new job in Indianapolis was about the "Milan Miracle" of 1954, the year tiny Milan High School, totaling 161 students, upended mighty four-time state champion Muncie Central for the state title. Bobby Plump, the man who made the winning shot in the 32-30 victory, had achieved legendary status in the Hoosier state.

This huge upset was the basis for the 1986 movie "Hoosiers."

My first Indiana high school basketball season was busy. I was quickly learning the names and geographical locations of all the public high schools. The bureau was nearly overwhelmed by phone calls on game nights, reporting the scores of more than 200 games and highlights from the games involving the Top 25 teams in the AP poll, which was mine to compile and oversee.

After the last of the Top 25 scores had been reported by the school or a local paper, I took the highlights and wrote a roundup story, detailing the best moments of the night.

We had a checklist and, if somebody failed to call in (they were upset because their team lost or they had too much to drink or simply forgot), I had to chase down the score. More than once, I telephoned the local police in desperation to see if they knew the score. They usually did.

But just how important high school basketball was did not fully register until my bureau chief, Tom Dygard, called me into his office in February of my first year in Indy.

"Next Thursday is the high school tournament pairings draw,''  he said. "The only event more important on our calendar is the Indy 500."

The pairings for the tournament, determining where each team would begin play and how they would proceed through the tournament if they kept winning, were set by a blind draw at the Indianapolis headquarters of the Indiana High School Athletic Association.

Steve Herman was there for the start of the draw at 7 a.m., with an open telephone line to me at the bureau, where I typed in the pairings and sent them onto the wire as quickly as possible. At the end of the draw, I wrote a story detailing where the top teams would be starting and who they would be playing.

Radio stations across the state brought in local coaches and athletic directors to watch the draw come in on the wire in real time and discuss the significance. And the stations sold ad time for the shows. It was big time stuff.

That first year, everything went very smoothly and I began thinking about how we were going to cover the tournament. I had stringers set up at all the major venues and I was set to cover the semifinals and the championship game at Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

But I wanted to do something splashy, something that hadn't been done before.

What I came up with was visits to each of the Final Four schools the week of the state championship.

I got permission from Tom Dygard to drive to the various high schools and then write one feature a day leading into the opening round of the tournament on Friday.

That year, the finalists were unbeaten East Chicago Washington and Elkhart, both located in the northwest corner of the state, close to the Illinois border, New Castle, just east of Indianapolis, and Floyd Central, located in the tiny bedroom community of Floyd's Knobs, in southern Indiana, just across the river from Louisville, Ky.

I started with favored Washington and was welcomed by school officials, who promptly held a pep rally in the gym to show me the school's spirit. The energy was almost overwhelming.

Elkhart was next and it was hard to find any evidence the school even had a basketball team. Other than a few hand-written signs out front and a "Good Luck Blue Blazers" message on the electronic sign board out front, there was little to show the team was on the way to the state finals.

I met the coach and a few of the players and they were definitely excited. But I had to work pretty hard to come up with an interesting story. A visit to the local mom and pop deli, where some of the Elkhart kids hung out, helped flesh out the story.

The trip to New Castle, one of the traditional powerhouses in Indiana basketball, was more rewarding. The New Castle Fieldhouse had a seating capacity of 9,325, bigger than a half dozen of the nation's Top 25 college basketball arenas. The school was decorated with "Win State" signs from the start of the driveway to the front entrance,and the excitement inside the school building was palpable.

Then came the near-two-hour drive to Floyd's Knobs, where the team was about to begin its first trip to the finals and everyone was trying to figure out the best way to celebrate the situation. Talking to the students, I could tell they were trying to be cool about the newfound basketball success, and having a hard time containing their feelings.

The stories all got great play in the state's newspapers and I was totally exhausted heading into the tournament itself.

Talk about starting from the top, though. The East Chicago Washington team, which wound up winning the 1970-71 title with a 29-0 record, was perhaps the best high school basketball team ever assembled, They overwhelmed nearly every opponent and each of the starters went on to play at a Division I college.

The team's center, Tim Stoddard, played at North Carolina State and eventually made it to the Major Leagues as a pitcher. Forward Ullyses "Junior" Bridgeman led Louisville to the 1974 national title, the 1975 Final Four and had a 12-year career in the NBA. Forward Pete Trgovich played at UCLA and was on the Bruins team that beat Louisville in the 1975 championship game.

The Washington Senators were a pleasure to watch and a great introduction to high-level Indiana high school basketball.

The next year's state finals were memorable, too. But not because of the teams.

The week of the finals I got sick. I had a sore throat that turned into laryngitis. I could barely speak above a whisper on the morning of the semifinals.

At that point, we were dictating our stories to the bureau on the telephone and my seat at Hinkle Fieldhouse was in the bleachers, directly in front of the Anderson High School cheerleaders and next to the school's pep band.

Working the 1972 Indiana State Basketball Tournament

Somehow, I croaked out my leads and made it through the day. By the time the finals began the next day, my voice had at least partially returned.

The pairings draw went well in 1972, but the 1973 draw proved to be one of my toughest days in the AP.

The bureau was in the process of switching to computers and, as often happens with new systems, there were occasional breakdowns. Unfortunately, the biggest breakdown we had was on pairings day.


 Moments after the draw began, the bureau computers went down. Even as the techs scrambled to get them restarted, the clock ticked away and the pairings sat on my screen with me unable to get them onto the wire. The phone lines lit up. People at the papers and radio and tv stations that had only the AP were angry and frustrated.

Meanwhile, UPI, which had not yet begun its computerization, was sending out the pairings with no problem.

After the system came back up and the pairings and the roundup were finally sent, Tom Dygard came out of his office with an angry look on his face.

"We've had about a dozen cancellations from members," Tom said. "This is a disaster."

UPI tried hard to use our bad pairings day as a marketing tool. It was touch and go for a while but, in the end, Tom and the state salesmen managed to keep all the members.

Ironically, a year later, our computers worked smoothly and we got the draw out without a hitch, while UPI, which was playing catch-up on computerization, had glitches similar to ours the previous year. It was quite satisfying.

The pairings draw played out in a personal drama, too. In February, 1975, Judy was nearing her due date for the birth of our second child. Bright and early on the morning of the pairings draw, I kissed Judy goodbye and said, "Don't have a baby until I get home."

I had no way of knowing _ and Judy wasn't telling _ that her contractions had already begun.

The draw went smoothly and, as I wrapped up my writing, I reached for the phone to see how things were going at home. Our neighbor, who was going to stay with Tory while Judy and I went to hospital, answered.

"You'd better get home - quick," he said. "Judy is about to have the baby."

I drove home like a mad man, lucky not to attract the police. Judy said, "I didn't want to interfere with such an important day, but I've been waiting to have this baby since you left this morning."

When we arrived at the hospital, I dropped Judy off at the emergency room entrance and went to park the car. When I walked into the lobby, she was nowhere to be seen. I asked the lady behind the desk if she knew where the little woman with the big belly was.

She smiled and said, "She's upstairs having a baby."

I got there just in time. After putting on a gown and booties outside the room, I stepped in just as Lanni's head poked out. Talk about timing.

She was a beautiful baby girl to pair up with our handsome 16-month-old boy, Tory. The perfect family - and I got the pairings draw out, too."