TERRE HAUTE — You might recall that we started this week talking four great people I know, and about the naming of the new gym at Woodrow Wilson Middle School for Trannie Grainger and Mike Kennedy.
I’m not sure if there’s a name for the gym at Hinsdale South High School in Darien, Ill., but if they’re looking for a suggestion, I’ve got one. How about Brenda Whitesell Gym, or maybe Brenda Whitesell Field for the school’s softball team?
Whitesell, still practically a child at 53, submitted her resignation as the school’s girls basketball coach less than a week ago, after 500 wins and 271 losses in the past 27 seasons. Counting the four seasons she spent at Knox (Ind.) High School, her overall basketball record is 544-301.
She was also Hindale South’s softball coach from 1983 through 1997, with a 330-144 record there.
“I only have two years left before I can retire from teaching,” she explained by telephone earlier this week, “and I figured it was time that someone else needed to be learning how to do everything.”
Don’t take that to mean that Whitesell, a West Vigo (1973) and Indiana State (1977) graduate, is going to take it easy. She expects to be available for consultations with the new coach, if needed, and even has thoughts about trying to coach another sport — maybe boys tennis, she said, giving her a chance to coach boys for the first time.
She hasn’t coached tennis yet either, she said, although she played the sport one season at Indiana State. She has also coached track and volleyball; played volleyball and ran track at West Vigo (because girls basketball and softball weren’t high school sports yet when she was in school) and competed in volleyball, tennis, basketball and softball at ISU. She expressed disappointment this week that her student teaching, in the fall of her senior year with the Sycamores, prevented her from playing a fall sport that year.
Oh, and before she graduated from West Vigo she was also playing for the nationally renowned Chevettes in women’s softball. While at Indiana State she played in four national tournaments — two WNITs with Edie Godleski’s basketball team and two College World Series with Mary Swiess’s softball team. She also played for seven state championship teams — catcher and shortstop — with the Chevettes.
She was ISU’s Athlete of the Year in 1977, was named to the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame in 2005, and was inducted into the Illinois Coaches Association Softball Hall of Fame in February of this year. Those three were honors she appreciated, she said, because she was nominated and elected by her peers.
Godleski and Swiess — who also coached the Chevettes, making Whitesell a pretty easy recruit for the Sycamores to get — remain huge influences in her life, she said.
“I was fortunate to be able to take the best from two of the earliest role models for women,” she said this week. “I learned a lot about discipline [from them], and I learned about teaching the game.”
You might find her more often in the future at Pizza City on North Second Street, where Margie Whitesell — her mother and, she quips, chief publicist — can usually be found behind the counter.
“I’d like to pursue some other interests,” Whitesell said when asked about any upcoming free time. “Be able to come home more and spend time with Mom and my family.”
But there might also be a small college or a junior college that needs a coach, she admitted. And for that matter, she still hasn’t tried coaching baseball, or golf, or gymnastics, or badminton ...
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• He’s almost there — Then you might remember Evan Austin, the Terre Haute South freshman who is already on any list of all-time mental attitude award winners.
Evan spent his spring break in Minnesota trying out for the U.S. Paralympic Swim Team, and wound up first alternate on the men’s team after winning three gold medals and setting a national record in the process.
“If anyone drops out, I’ll be going [to China],” he told me by telephone this week.
Evan won the 100 butterfly, the 50 freestyle and the 800 freestyle, was second in both the 100 freestyle and 400 freestyle and was third in the 100 backstroke. If you are asking, like I did, how he could win three times and not make the team, it comes down to times. Evan’s best time on a worldwide basis is actually in an event he didn’t win, the 400 freestyle, where he ranks 12th in the world; the 20th man on the 20-man swim team is 11th in the world in one of his events.
Evan’s favorite moment may have been learning about his national record — in the 50 freestyle, which ironically wasn’t supposed to be one of his strongest events. He didn’t know about it until the next day, when he saw the list of national records being posted on the huge scoreboard. “We have a picture of that,” he said.
And did he have a good time?
“It was absolutely wonderful,” he said this week. “I was so amazed with the capabilities of everyone there. It was an honor to be there.”
And, of course, he has plenty of time to make the team in the future.
“They told me, ‘If you don’t go to China, be ready for London [in 2012],’ ” Evan said.
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• Throneburg, Hayes update — Denny Throneburg e-mailed me this week to update people in the Terre Haute area on the progress of the Lake Land College softball team. As of Monday it was 24-3, 15-1 in the Great Rivers Athletic Conference, and ranked first in the nation in hitting for Division I junior colleges with a team batting average of .429.
Helping that average stay so high has been Terre Haute North graduate Alicia Hayes, who is batting .476 (39 for 82) so far with 15 doubles, two triples, two homers, 32 RBIs and a .780 slugging percentage. She’s already signed with IUPUI for next season.
Andy Amey can be reached after 4 p.m. for comments or news items at (812) 231-4277 or at 1-800-783-8742; by e-mail at andy.amey@tribstar.com; by mail at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, 47808; or by fax at (812) 231-4321.
Amey Takes Aim
Amey Takes Aim: West Vigo grad ends prolific coaching career
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Amey Takes Aim: NHL playoffs to put TVs to good use
If Jenny had known, she probably wouldn’t have bought that TV.
But four or five years ago, my Fathers Day present — for those unfamiliar with Amey family traditions, the Fathers Day one is “let’s get something we all really want and pretend it’s a gift for Dad” — was a 42-inch Vizio. It’s been used even more than the cell phone I never would have bought for myself, or the TomTom that disappeared since Jenny’s smartphone arrived.
And it came with high-def.
I’m not going to insult you by telling you how great high-def is, because to do so would be to imply that you are even farther behind the technological curve than I am. I’m guessing, however, that not all of you have yet discovered what it does for hockey. -
Amey Takes Aim: Can’t bottle the joy of Amey vacations
The first bad sign was the Gatorade bottle.
In the Bataan-Death-March drive to Orlando that got the Amey family spring break vacation off to a bad start, seeing it between lanes of I-24 — as we zipped along at a 100-miles-in-five-hours clip — filled with an ominous yellow liquid was a little bit scary. And although we didn't stop to check for sure, I'm fairly certain I knew about its contents.
And the person stuck in the same traffic jam with us, the one with the existential license plate YMIHR4, couldn’t have asked a more pertinent question.
But, after seeing a lot more of Oak Grove, Ky., than we’d planned, and after enduring more traffic slowdowns in Nashville, we were on our way. Even some rain in the dark in the Smokies didn’t slow us down much, so you would think our first-day troubles were over.
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ANDY AMEY: Farewell to basketball
I believe you’ve heard me say before — just about a year ago, perhaps — that a boys high school basketball season that ends with the Tribune-Star in Bankers Life Fieldhouse can’t be considered a bad one, which is why we have a little celebrating to do thanks to the Linton Miners.
Lover of irony that I am, I’ve also got to point out that this season was another branch sprouting from the Wabash Valley’s most legendary coaching tree, that of Joe Hart.
Joe never got much credit for his work at Dugger, but he took Brody Boyd, Clark Golish and the Bulldogs to a state championship game in 2000, and since then three of his former players — Joe Pigg, Clint Swan and now Joey Hart, his son — also have coached teams in the final game of the season.
Joe probably wishes he could take credit for Doc Nash, another down-home type who gave a banjo lesson earlier Saturday in leading Borden past a bigger, more athletic Triton team (banjo lesson is a Howard Sharpism, for you younger readers), but his lineage is still the best I can think of around here. -
AMEY TAKES AIM: Maroons, Rox final a true Classic
I don’t make predictions nearly as often as I used to, but I had one several months ago that was proven correct last week.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Nitpicking aside, West Vigo Hall of Fame selections spot on
I can’t imagine a better first class of inductees into the West Vigo High School Athletics Hall of Fame than the one that was feted Saturday night in the Jim Mann Green Dome.
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Tough bunch of people
I’m getting my warm clothes ready for a trip to Linton this week, and if a few thrills from the Miners, Casey or North Vermillion happen the next couple of weeks, I hope I get to see them.
But high school football is over in Vigo County for the season — as coach Chris Barrett of Terre Haute North said, prematurely — and I’m sadder to see it go than usual.
Walking the sidelines and doing midweek or postgame interviews enables me to meet quite a few of the guys whose names you are about to read, and haven’t been more impressed than I was this fall. What outstanding groups of young men. What a tough, tough bunch of people.
Many know that one of my favorite athletic adjectives appeared consecutively in the previous sentence. -
AMEY TAKES AIM: A weekend to remember with ISU’s ’72 football team
They’re all still pretty hale and hearty, the boys of the fall of 1972 who returned to campus over the weekend to honor their former football coach.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: ISU reunion raises more questions than answers
One of the wrestlers I used to hang out with occasionally claimed to be a pretty good second-story man — although he may have just been talking, since I never saw any of the goods — and it was with him in mind that I was able to get access to the Indiana State Wrestling Alumni Reunion late Saturday night.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Deciding not to ‘vacate’ during ‘vacation’ – & other ventures
Flaunting the law, setting a bad example for the kids in other ways, grooming and acquiring dogs … not a typical Amey family vacation, but an appreciated one just the same.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Huntsville’s Stars, Havoc take back seat to GGS
The second-best thing about the Amey family’s spring-break trip to Huntsville, Ala., is that we left a lot of things on the table to do the next time we’re down there.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Rox well represented on Amey teams
If having the state finals in town makes it a successful girls high school basketball season, then certainly having a team to follow at the state finals makes it a very successful boys high school basketball season . . .
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AMEY TAKES AIM: A feeling of pride, not disappointment, comes from watching Rox play
It’s not going to come as a startling admission that I — once the rest of the local opposition has been eliminated from consideration — am an unabashed fan of whatever team the Wabash Valley sends onward in postseason high school sports competition.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: This private school plays basketball the right way
Any girls high school basketball season that ends with state championship games in Hulman Center is a pretty good one — even though I wished I’d seen Riverton Parke and Seeger knock off a couple of private schools the week before to even the public school-private school battle a little bit.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Even 2 of state’s best once had doubts
Look at them now.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Getting ready for the dance
Terre Haute North got the good news Sunday night — or did it?
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Harrowing path for state hopefuls
The bad news is that the winner of Class 4A Sectional 13 in boys basketball heads northeast instead of southeast for regional play in March — to Hinkle Fieldhouse instead of Seymour as a result of Indiana High School Athletic Association’s changes.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: A superior all-star arrangement
I don’t work on Wednesdays, so I wasn’t able to attend the first Wabash Valley Football Coaches Association draft last week to set up the annual all-star game that will be June 23 this year.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: The biggest & baddest of a holiday classic
There are more things to love about the Pizza Hut Wabash Valley Classic than could fit in this newspaper, but one of this year’s best things was that for an hour or so on Wednesday, it was Justin Paddock’s world and we were just living in it.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Taking note of ISU’s latest football win
The biggest difference I’ve noticed, as I transition from the high school football beat to quasi-official status as the Indiana State football beat writer for a few weeks, is the length of the games.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: IHSAA playoff draw not as bad as it could have been
First reaction to the Indiana sectional football pairings drawn late Sunday by the Indiana High School Athletic Association? It could have been a lot worse.
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ANDY AMEY: Between the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & a hard place
Just in case any of you noticed — with some anticipation — the recent lack of my bylines, I can tell you that your wish (and mine) did come true. It was vacation week for the Amey family.
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Amey Takes Aim: UFC fighter’s bloodines traced back to ISU brothers
As a mild-mannered reporter from a great metropolitan newspaper — or thereabouts — I admit I haven’t paid much attention to the burgeoning mixed martial arts scene.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Predators’ win is music to new fan’s ears
For many, many years, the number of live games televised on WGN has been cited as perhaps the main reason for the popularity of the Chicago Cubs (it’s got to be something besides masochism, right?).
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AMEY TAKES AIM: You’ll be having a good ol’ time on vacation with the Ameys
When one of the first people you meet is Tammy Wynette’s stepdaughter, when you’ve stepped on the feet of people you haven’t met while trying to navigate Ernest Tubbs’ old Silver Eagle tour bus, and when the activities director of your resort is, well, Elvis, you might be vacationing in Nashville.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: The Annual All-Amey basketball teams close out the prep season
The most encouraging boys high school basketball event I’ve attended so far in 2011 has been the Lafayette Semistate a couple of weeks ago.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Family remembers Cheryl Weatherman as caring grandmother
As far as Riley and Keely Davis are concerned, Cheryl Weatherman was simply their grandmother, and a pretty darn good one at that.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Honor to see Turkey Run girls close out memorable career
I don’t know if anyone in this part of the state could actually say they enjoy going to Fort Wayne and back, but I was glad to see the Turkey Run Warriors play one last time during the girls basketball state finals Saturday.
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So many matches, so many favorites
Go ahead, ask me anything about the 224 wrestlers who competed last week at the Indiana state finals — or at least about the 112 wrestlers who survived Saturday’s first round.
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ANDY TAKES AIM: A sportwriters’s lament: Oh, the games we missed
I was already tired of winter by the time that first bitterly cold snap passed through in mid-December, so it’s safe to say the season hasn’t grown on me.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Time of the season for teams to tough it out
In the last month or so I figure I’ve seen at least four boys high school basketball teams with legitimate state-championship dreams as the season heads into its dog days.
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