Stop the presses: NAC talks high school basketball?

Insofar as the outside world cares, and this is unlikely, New Albany currently is known as the place where a runaway barge is lodged against an elderly railroad bridge across the Ohio.

A higher percentage of that select breed known as Court TV watchers probably are completely unaware of the barge, but are familiar with our city’s peripheral role in the murder trials of David Camm and Charles Boney.

NA Confidential isn’t interested in devoting time or space to either of these events, while at the same time recognizing their newsworthiness. The barge mishap serves as a timely reminder that proximity to rivers, airports, railroads and interstate highways – to any mode of transport – brings with it possibilities for accidents, some quite serious.

The seemingly eternal legal proceedings over the Camm family murders are our particular, local manifestation of the very essence of human tragedy in all its varied shades and colors. While there’s nothing like a criminal trial to bring out the “expert” in us all, we’ll happily defer from comment.

Instead, let’s talk sports.

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, the author was a two-year varsity basketball player at Floyd Central High School. Teammates included Floyd County Commissioner Charles Freiberger and Scott Cecil, the New Albany fireman who was sleeping inside the Charlestown Road Fire Station No. 6 last Thursday when a drunken Taco Bell customer drove his minivan into its side.

Without going into details that are irrelevant after 28 years, it proved not to be the sort of empowering, life affirming experience suggested by movies like “Hoosiers,” the collegiate and professional Hall of Fame career of Larry Bird or even the political odyssey of one-time hoopster Lee Hamilton – which is to say, it was a fairly uneventful couple of years.

We won more than we lost, advanced to the regional both years, and went no further. Some games I played, and others not. The experience did little to promote success with cheerleaders, but helped in keeping my weight down until after graduation.

Last Friday night, my alma mater played its annual homecoming game against Seymour on the heels of an exciting, come from behind victory the previous weekend that raised the previously winless team’s record to 1 and 10 on the year.

The Highlanders promptly lost to the Owls by 50 points.

That is not a misprint. Fifty points.

Obviously, the basketball program at Floyd Central has fallen on hard times, and the trend didn’t begin on Friday night. There have been two head coaches since the venerable Joe Hinton departed, and his latter years at the helm were marked by consistently mediocre play. In fact, there probably hasn’t been a truly outstanding Highlander basketball squad since Pat Graham was a senior, circa 1988 or 1989.

Why?

To have spent any appreciable time in Indiana is to have been exposed to the glorious mythology of Hoosier Hysteria, and to have grown up in Floyd County during the era of Hinton’s fabled Super Hicks of 1971 is to have absorbed another stiff dose of epic overachievement against long odds, such as when the the Super Hicks rolled up 41 fourth quarter points in a regional final win against senior star guard Baron Hill's Seymour five -- five points more than the Highlanders scored the entire game in the homecoming loss on Friday.

Obviously, the world has changed since then. Floyd Central’s suburban district is more affluent than ever before, and the school itself is rated highly in all areas of academic measurement. The musical arts and theater departments continue to be veritable monoliths.

Even in terms of athletics, FCHS varsity sports other than boys’ basketball have excelled, particularly those stressing individual achievement like golf, swimming, tennis and wrestling. The football and baseball teams have been strong more often than not. The girls’ athletics program seems solid, and the basketball, volleyball and softball teams are competitve most years and quite good in others.

Some will cite the deleterious influence of the class basketball, and of course kids have much more to occupy their time now as compared to four decades ago. Others may point to facile conclusions derived from shallow black vs. white demographics, but there probably isn’t much truly scientific about this or any perspective, as would be attested by examples of programs at other demographically similar schools enjoying sustained success under analogous conditions.

Commissioner Freiberger, who still teaches at Highland Hills Middle School and lives in the county, might be able to shed some light on these questions, but along with Mr. And Mrs. Confidential, Scott’s a New Albanian now, and his children were (and are) Bulldogs.

There'll be no answers here. Contrary to popular troglodyte opinion, NAC knows it doesn't know everything. There may or may not be a larger truth resting somewhere in this story about high school basketball, and either way, it's a stimulating diversion from the norm.

To be sure, there are many more important topics, although the utility of periodic grappling with demons from one's past should never be entirely dismissed.