Among other things discovered during that week we spent blogging about Scott Rolen, there’s an Indiana–Kentucky All-Star Series. Each state has a high school all-star team, both a boys team and a girls team, and the teams play each other. It looks like the game’s currently played every June.
This is awesome.
I have to admit, it makes me sad to not have known this happens. It makes me jealous of people from Kentucky and Indiana. I know this isn’t as big as either state tournament or as the Kentucky Derby or the Indy 500, but this feels big. This feels like a significant event. This feels like something any college basketball fan I talked to from either state would know about out of hand, like how people from Des Moines know about the Drake Relays. Now I’m wondering if there are other all-star games I’m missing. Illinois doesn’t have one that’s Chicago vs. Illinois, right? That isn’t something that exists? I don’t only not know about it because the Fox Valley Conference was pretty bad at basketball compared to other sports?
Now I can’t wait to run into my Indiana friends and ask them about this. I hope it’s huge. But I also wonder if it used to be bigger. If the Indy Star was wiping Misters Basketball from the records because they didn’t play on the all-star team, did that mean it was a big deal? Did the team maybe even play some states besides Kentucky? I need to find a P.E. teacher from Anderson and pick that brain.
