The rhythm of March

They're just a bunch of kids from a small town, but this week they are March in Indiana. They're the kids who climb ladders on certain Saturdays that either fly with snow or arrive with spring on their breath, kids with scissors in hand. At the top of the ladder they reach out and snip tufts of nylon basketball net, and down below them everyone hoots and hollers.

They're just a bunch of kids from a small town. But this week, they are March in Indiana.

Their names are Bright and Farmer and Shirley and Walls; Thomas and Keasler and Tatlock and Helt. They come from a town of 1,500 souls hard by the interstate in southern Indiana, 15 miles south of Seymour and 10 miles north of Scottsboro. The high school they go to has an enrollment of 197, class sizes average a cozy 13 or so, and their school colors are red and white.

But all of that is just detail. And today there is only one detail that matters in Crothersville, In.

The Crothersville Tigers are sectional champs.

Saturday night Bright and Farmer and Shirley and the rest beat West Washington, 57-51, in the championship game of the 1A Edinburgh sectional. West Washington had beaten them just three weeks before, 55-51, but to heck with that. This time it was the Tigers' turn, and now they're 14-10 and headed to Loogootee, where this coming Saturday they will play Barr-Reeve in the first game of the Loogootee regional.

Here's what makes Bright and Farmer and Shirley and the rest different from Barr-Reeve and everyone else who won titles at 64 sectional sites across Indiana: They're the only ones who were doing it for the first time in 105 years.

That's how long Crothersville High School has been around, and in all that time, as the Indianapolis Star reported, the Tigers had never before won a sectional. The Great War had come and gone, the Great Depression had come and gone, World War II and Korea and Vietnam and 17 presidents had come and gone. And the boys from Crothersville had never gotten to climb a ladder in March, scissors in hand.

That's a pile of boys, from 1915 to now. That's a pile of boys who had gone off to two world wars and raised three or four generations of other boys who went to Crothersville High School and never climbed a ladder in March.

And then came March 7, 2020.

And up the ladder went Bright and Farmer and Shirley and Walls; Thomas and Keasler and Tatlock and Helt.

And now it's on to Loogootee, where 25-1 Barr-Reeve awaits.

On paper, it doesn't look good for the Tigers. But this is March. And this Indiana.

Where the snow flies one day, and there is a breath of spring the next, and kids go up ladders on a Saturday night 105 years in the making.