Bird left imprint on prep players
Local high school kids saw Bird as their friend
As Indiana State fans of the late 1970s well know, national recognition — even statewide recognition — of Larry Bird and the Sycamores was a little slow in coming.
But for high school basketball coaches and players in the Wabash Valley and in southwestern Indiana, Bird and his teammates provided an education in some of the finer points of basketball.
ISU’s greatest period of success, in fact, coincided with one of the most successful high school periods in Vigo County. The Sycamores went to the National Invitational Tournament in 1977 and 1978 and to the NCAA national championship game in 1979, the three seasons in which Terre Haute South made consecutive trips to Market Square Arena for Indiana’s Final Four.
‘‘I think there definitely was a carryover to the kids [on South’s team],’’ said Gordon Neff, who coached those Braves and who is now retired in Texas. ‘‘He was quite an idol to the kids at that time.
‘‘The kids would all go to [ISU] games as much as possible,’’ Neff continued, ‘‘and to be involved in the excitement of it probably gave them an incentive to work a little harder.’’
Thanks to the ISU connections of South guard Cam Cameron, the eventual 1979 Trester Award winner and the stepson of Sycamore football coach Tom Harp, Bird was more than just another player.
‘‘Some of [the South players] knew him through Cam,’’ Neff pointed out. ‘‘They were always going to ISU in the summer to play pickup games.’’
Bird was a friend to more than just Vigo County players.
‘‘He would come down and hand out awards at our [basketball] camps at French Lick,’’ recalled Jim Jones, who was coaching at Princeton when Bird was at ISU. ‘‘He always seemed to have time for the kids.
‘‘A lot of Princeton kids were at his camp, and a lot of Terre Haute kids too,’’ said Jones, who coached Bird for two years at Springs Valley and later succeeded Neff as the coach at Terre Haute North. ‘‘His personality never changed. All the kids were really close to him, and felt like they knew him personally.’’
Some of the kids who knew Bird best were at West Vigo, where the ISU star did his student teaching following the 1979 season.
‘‘He had a very positive effect on [the West Vigo athletes],’’ said Dick Ballinger, baseball coach of the Vikings at that time as well as Bird’s mentor teacher. ‘‘We won the [baseball] sectional that year, and I think we had a losing record going into the sectional.
‘‘Like everybody he’s been around, he had a positive influence.’’
Bird took his first coaching experience seriously too.
‘‘I remember sitting in the coach’s office when he took a call from his agent, Bob Woolf,’’ said Bob Burton, who coached the Viking basketball team during those seasons. ‘‘Larry was supposed to have some kind of meeting in Indianapolis, but I heard him tell Woolf, ‘I have a B team baseball game to coach in Bloomington tonight, and that’s my first obligation.’
‘‘I think [Woolf] sent a Lear jet to pick him up in Bloomington that day,’’ Burton continued. ‘‘I can remember him out on the baseball field putting in the bases and lining the field.’’
Bird’s student teaching assignment came after the basketball season, of course, but Burton said he still had an impact on the Vikings.
‘‘I definitely think the passing game was affected by his presence,’’ said Burton, now a counselor at South. ‘‘The kids took more pride in their assists, and they saw the merit in making the rest of their teammates look good.
‘‘I think the whole community prospered from his overall attitude.’’
Burton joked that there was only one negative effect to Bird’s presence in the community.
‘‘The crowds [at high school games] weren’t as good, because everyone was watching Bird,’’ he laughed.
Bird’s first lunch hour at West Vigo caused quite a stir, Ballinger remembers.
‘‘I took him to the cafeteria after the high school kids had eaten, but the middle school kids were in there and they just went wild,’’ Ballinger said.
But it didn’t take long for the West Vigo students to see the tall student teacher as a friend instead of a curiosity.
‘‘The kids in the high school all looked up to him,’’ Ballinger said, ‘‘and he’d usually stay after [baseball] practice and talk to the kids or play basketball with them.’’
Jones said he was never tempted to tell his Princeton teams any stories about coaching Bird at Springs Valley. But the Tigers, who reached the Final Four themselves in 1983, felt the Bird influence just like the Wabash Valley teams did.
‘‘Larry had an impact on young kids’ team play,’’ Jones said. ‘‘He always emphasized team play so much, and he was such a tremendous passer.
‘‘With he and Magic [playing against each other at the same time], there were a lot of backyard games where one kid would be one or the other,’’ Jones continued, ‘‘and with his work ethic being so outstanding, that had an effect on young people too.’’
Pat Rady, who succeeded Neff at South, didn’t have a team that was exposed to Bird in the late ’70s.
‘‘He wasn’t on television much over there [at Shelbyville, where Rady coached before coming to South], so we didn’t get to see him,’’ Rady said recently.
‘‘But when I got [to Terre Haute], I saw the influence he had here.’’
One of the first star players Rady coached at South, 1982 graduate David Conrady, had been influenced a lot by Bird, the coach said.
And much more recently, 1991 South graduate Brian Evans — who went on to star at Indiana University and who is currently with the New Jersey Nets in the National Basketball Association — was a disciple of Bird’s style of play.
‘‘Even though he was very young [when Bird played at ISU], Brian patterned his game after Larry Bird,’’ Rady noted. ‘‘When [Evans] was a senior, a lot of people wondered why we let a 6-foot-8 kid play so far out on the floor.
‘‘But Brian was our best passer. He led us in assists, rebounds and steals in addition to points,’’ Rady continued. ‘‘Coach [Mike] Saylor had some [film] clips of Larry, and we ran some of the same offenses for Brian that Bill Hodges used for Larry.’’
Young players who got to see Bird regularly in those years were getting a rare gift, Rady pointed out.
‘‘The way [Bird] incorporated the total game into his play did nothing but help the kids who watched basketball at that time,’’ Rady said. ‘‘I’m sure he had to raise the level of play in this area.
‘‘Look at South, for example — three Final Fours!’’ Rady exclaimed. ‘‘He had to be a factor in those guys playing like that.’’