Do yourself a favor and dust off “Hoosiers” as part of your own March Madness

Few films have captured high school sports as vividly as this masterpiece

March is much like December to me, in a sentimental way. Christmastime just doesn’t seem complete unless my wife and I curl up in front of the TV and watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Sappy, yes, but some routines are worth savoring. Same goes for March as I dig around and through the dusty, basement boxes for our “Hoosiers” DVD.

What is surely one of the all-time great sports movies, “Hoosiers” never loses its appeal to anyone who’s ever played or loved high school basketball. It touches on all the grueling work and psychological uncertainty a high school team goes through to find itself. Then there’s the head coach who’s hell bent on dragging every ounce of effort and courage out of each player, er, and team manager. Drill, baby, drill has a completely different connotation in “Hoosiers.” Add obnoxious and meddling parents that have their peanut gallery say-so, a supportive albeit ailing principal, the overly protective guardian of the town’s best player and you have yourself an old fashioned Mid-west conundrum. All that, however, is a sideshow to the coach along with a couple of players that inevitably have to deal with their own demons, including a drunk dad, before healing, and winning, can happen. It’s Hollywood at its finest and I can’t wait to hit Start on the remote.

Basketball was my favorite sport as a kid and “Hoosiers” opening drive-by shots showing young boys from rural Indiana on dirt courts shooting at baskets with no nets hits close to home. Rural South Central Virginia looked much the same in my day. The sport was more than a pastime. It was my passion. My parents would have to call me in at night as I wore depressions into the ground at my favorite shooting spots, our family’s Ford Fairlane headlights having extended light after the sun had long since gone down. Shot after shot. Day after day. Night after night. Dribbling around the ruts and rocks while imitating Jerry West, Hondo Havlichek, Walt Frazier, Elgin Baylor, Oscar Roberson or Pete Maravich, the games were always close and one those guys had to make the last-second jumper to pull out the win. It was a game for the imagination where competitiveness was honed, work ethic developed and winning expected every time.

All those things and more are integral parts of “Hoosiers” and for another 90 minutes I can get lost in it all over again as Jimmy Chitwood miraculously wins the state championship for little Hickory High over the vaunted Bloomington Central. I never won a state championship, or came close for that matter. And in the end, I played football in college because I was more accurate at hitting receivers than getting a ball through a hoop, but that does not diminish to this day my love for the game.  So tonight when I drive into the garage, I will find “Hoosiers” in that box in the corner, go upstairs, sit down on the Lazy Boy and once again lose myself in a world only a few can truly appreciate.