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Medora - basketball documentary


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23 minutes ago, IndySportsPartizan said:

A few years ago I watched a documentary about  a high school team in Indiana called Medora. Something just made me think of it and I thought I should recommend it to you guys. Its a great watch. 

 

 

It is very well done and accurate.  We played Medora and at half time they have the home coming Queen do a victory lap around the gym waving.  Everyone stands and tios their cap etc.. thought it was interesting.  After the game we are waiting outside for our team. I look next to the main door and the queen is holding the door open for someone and smoking right inside the building while holding her 3 year old son.  A minute later a player comes out still in uniform lights up kisses the queen holds the baby.  We go back in and the door closes  and the queen yelled at the player hold the F ing door open for these people. As we get door both still smoking one of the coaches yells for player he puts it out in his hand puts it behind his ear and heads into locker.  My wife and thought we were in twilight zone 

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2 hours ago, Billingsley99 said:

It is very well done and accurate.  We played Medora and at half time they have the home coming Queen do a victory lap around the gym waving.  Everyone stands and tios their cap etc.. thought it was interesting.  After the game we are waiting outside for our team. I look next to the main door and the queen is holding the door open for someone and smoking right inside the building while holding her 3 year old son.  A minute later a player comes out still in uniform lights up kisses the queen holds the baby.  We go back in and the door closes  and the queen yelled at the player hold the F ing door open for these people. As we get door both still smoking one of the coaches yells for player he puts it out in his hand puts it behind his ear and heads into locker.  My wife and thought we were in twilight zone 

We played them when I was in high school a home and home over a couple years. Omg!! After playing there that series was never renewed!! I don’t know about tipping their cap but we took a physical beating. I mean we beat the crap out of them on the score board but it was like scenes straight out of Hoosiers with kid literally tackling our best player on a wide open fast break...the crowd was the roughest I’d ever seen. Foulest bunch. Popcorn thrown on the floor. Drinks at one point when one of their kids got a technical for an elbow...yeah crazy place...glad we rolled through the town in the dark...can’t imagine what I would have seen during the day. Never been back.

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17 minutes ago, dgambill said:

We played them when I was in high school a home and home over a couple years. Omg!! After playing there that series was never renewed!! I don’t know about tipping their cap but we took a physical beating. I mean we beat the crap out of them on the score board but it was like scenes straight out of Hoosiers with kid literally tackling our best player on a wide open fast break...the crowd was the roughest I’d ever seen. Foulest bunch. Popcorn thrown on the floor. Drinks at one point when one of their kids got a technical for an elbow...yeah crazy place...glad we rolled through the town in the dark...can’t imagine what I would have seen during the day. Never been back.

Sounds like Indiana High School basketball. You are right. Your story  reminds me of the fight scene in the great movie.... "Hoosiers".

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39 minutes ago, dgambill said:

We played them when I was in high school a home and home over a couple years. Omg!! After playing there that series was never renewed!! I don’t know about tipping their cap but we took a physical beating. I mean we beat the crap out of them on the score board but it was like scenes straight out of Hoosiers with kid literally tackling our best player on a wide open fast break...the crowd was the roughest I’d ever seen. Foulest bunch. Popcorn thrown on the floor. Drinks at one point when one of their kids got a technical for an elbow...yeah crazy place...glad we rolled through the town in the dark...can’t imagine what I would have seen during the day. Never been back.

 

3 hours ago, Billingsley99 said:

It is very well done and accurate.  We played Medora and at half time they have the home coming Queen do a victory lap around the gym waving.  Everyone stands and tios their cap etc.. thought it was interesting.  After the game we are waiting outside for our team. I look next to the main door and the queen is holding the door open for someone and smoking right inside the building while holding her 3 year old son.  A minute later a player comes out still in uniform lights up kisses the queen holds the baby.  We go back in and the door closes  and the queen yelled at the player hold the F ing door open for these people. As we get door both still smoking one of the coaches yells for player he puts it out in his hand puts it behind his ear and heads into locker.  My wife and thought we were in twilight zone 

Not sure what year you were playing there or what schools you played for, but i would say these stories may be a bit of a stretch based off some pretty personal experience. Medora gets a bad rap, but i would say if you visited during the day and were respectful, you would find most Medorians to be kind and welcoming. Onto the documentary, I think they may have dwelled on some of the more sensational stories a bit, but they were just trying to earn a buck!  I enjoyed watching it, if for no other reason than feeling like i was taking a walk down memory lane.

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24 minutes ago, 5fouls said:

Indiana Department of Education lists a student enrollment number for Medora High School of 44 this year.  

No.  I did not drop a number.

Why aren't these kids going to brownstown? I work with a recent brownstown graduate from medora. It isn't that far away. 

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16 hours ago, Billingsley99 said:

It is very well done and accurate.  We played Medora and at half time they have the home coming Queen do a victory lap around the gym waving.  Everyone stands and tios their cap etc.. thought it was interesting.  After the game we are waiting outside for our team. I look next to the main door and the queen is holding the door open for someone and smoking right inside the building while holding her 3 year old son.  A minute later a player comes out still in uniform lights up kisses the queen holds the baby.  We go back in and the door closes  and the queen yelled at the player hold the F ing door open for these people. As we get door both still smoking one of the coaches yells for player he puts it out in his hand puts it behind his ear and heads into locker.  My wife and thought we were in twilight zone 

Just make the two of them siblings, and that's a story straight out of Kentucky.

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14 hours ago, mrflynn03 said:

Why aren't these kids going to brownstown? I work with a recent brownstown graduate from medora. It isn't that far away. 

Someone at the state level is not doing their job. There is very little jujustification for keeping that high school open.  Those kids are being wronged.

  

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14 hours ago, mrflynn03 said:

Why aren't these kids going to brownstown? I work with a recent brownstown graduate from medora. It isn't that far away. 

Someone at the state level is not doing their job. There is very little jujustification for keeping that high school open.  Those kids are being wronged.

  

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This is the county I grew up in. Brownstown grad. 

Pretty sure BNL wants those students. 

One of my best friends was the coach at Medora for 3 years, he is now the head coach at Springs Valley. He won 8 games at Medora then 7 games in his 2nd year. Honestly pretty impressive. 

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1 hour ago, Billingsley99 said:

 

44 students is an average of 11 per grade.  What kind of curriculum can be offered to a student body that small?  There can't be any college prep classes.  Does it even include things like Physics and Chemistry?

Edit: Did not mean to quote you Bilingsley. 

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40 minutes ago, btownqb said:

This is the county I grew up in. Brownstown grad. 

Pretty sure BNL wants those students. 

One of my best friends was the coach at Medora for 3 years, he is now the head coach at Springs Valley. He won 8 games at Medora then 7 games in his 2nd year. Honestly pretty impressive. 

Yes it is very impressive. Springs Valley off to a rough start so far I believe.

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9 minutes ago, 5fouls said:

44 students is an average of 11 per grade.  What kind of curriculum can be offered to a student body that small?  There can't be any college prep classes.  Does it even include things like Physics and Chemistry?

Edit: Did not mean to quote you Bilingsley. 

I went to what most would call an extremely small public high school. My graduating class was 59, which admittedly, is abnormally small even by their standards. Average is usually 70-75.

But damn...the school is smaller than my graduating class?

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I live on the northern edge of Washington county, probably 25 minutes or so from Medora. Played and coached over there many times. I remember playing them in a Friday night sectional game my junior year (they got the bye) and having one of their players tell me, "Hey man, good luck tomorrow night. I hope you guys win it." Too bad that was in the second quarter. We ended up beating them by about 40, but it was never that close. The guys I played against there always seemed like good kids and they always played hard, just never had much talent. 

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On 12/10/2019 at 8:03 PM, Snackdaddy said:

 

Not sure what year you were playing there or what schools you played for, but i would say these stories may be a bit of a stretch based off some pretty personal experience. Medora gets a bad rap, but i would say if you visited during the day and were respectful, you would find most Medorians to be kind and welcoming. Onto the documentary, I think they may have dwelled on some of the more sensational stories a bit, but they were just trying to earn a buck!  I enjoyed watching it, if for no other reason than feeling like i was taking a walk down memory lane.

Like I said we rolled into town it was already dark (as most 7pm game nights in December)...but the crowd was not friendly and the team while I’m sure had many good kids were rough....probably mostly due to being uncoordinated on the court in the case of the tackle...but the elbow was deliberate...and likely a result of being yelled at by his parent to get tough down low after our best player dunked on them. I have no clue about the town just what I saw in the doc. Just saying what Bills posted matched my experience as well.

All said...my old home town could just as easily be the subject of the video now. Last 10-15 years have been unkind to a mining community and when the school closes a lot changes fast. My mom bought the whole city block she lives on and tore down all the squatter houses. I wish she would just move but it’s sentimental to her. So I’m not saying that to say I’m any better than those folks...lots of rough places in poor areas of Indiana but I also can say...it has been rough for a long time because I played high school over 20 years ago.

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11 hours ago, Zlinedavid said:

Just make the two of them siblings, and that's a story straight out of Kentucky.

We had a neighboring rough little town (mostly trailers) and again I say this growing up poor myself...anyways we called that town J-Tucky...so there are places like that in Indiana lol.

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9 hours ago, 5fouls said:

Probably not.  But public schools are not private entities.  They should not be allowed to deny those 44 kids a proper education.

My school was small...albeit not that small. I graduated with 29 kids. Around 150 probably all grades (Hs)..but it would go up and down. Lots of reasons for not closing it..and for why to close it. That said I got an excellent education. I had advanced chemistry, physics, calculus, cp English, computer programming (c++ etc), and cp biology, and anatomy physiology. Granted I was the only student in the calculus class and physics one of 5 but I had excellent teachers. I wouldn’t assume a small school is not able to sustain excellence. However...perhaps that is because we had teachers with like 30-35 years experience and I would say masters of their area teaching everything from geometry and algebra to calculus and many newer teachers probably couldn’t master that many areas but these old school teachers knew how to teach!

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