Mark Bennett: Coming up, the Wabash Valley Classic -- 'feel-good moment for community'

Dec. 14—To paint a picture of the task of hosting the popular First Financial Wabash Valley Classic high school boys basketball tournament, Terre Haute South Athletic Director Ed Jarvis used an analogy thousands of local parents could relate to.

"It's like planning a wedding," Jarvis said Thursday.

"But it goes on for four days," he added.

In the parlance of social media, it's complicated. And fun.

Jarvis wasn't referring simply to his own role in orchestrating the annual midseason tournament, the largest and most well-attended in the state. It takes a village — a network of several villages actually — to stage the Wabash Valley Classic, which began in 2000. Its operation involves the staff at the host school (which alternates between Terre Haute North and Terre Haute South every other year), 84 officials, ticket takers, score table crew, security, concession stand staff, bus drivers, sponsors, athletic staff and volunteers at the 15 other participating schools and, of course, the players, coaches and managers of every team.

Then the games start.

"Once the ball goes up, the thing truly runs itself," Jarvis said, acknowledging that, still, sometimes "things come up."

The 24th Classic begins with a 10 a.m. game Tuesday, Dec. 26 between Sullivan and Robinson and continues on its unique format until the championship game at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 29. Sixteen teams play 28 games over four days at one site.

Daily attendance can top 2,000 fans from across west-central Indiana and east-central Illinois. Tourney-goers routinely watch multiple games a day and then pop into restaurants, stores and gas stations during their day trips. The largest single-game crowds assemble for the anticipated finale.

It's special even for the referees. Eighty-four refs travel to Terre Haute to officiate one game each, in crews of three. "They're from everywhere," Jarvis said. "In the officials world, it's a time to see their friends and colleagues, but it's also kind of a status thing."

And all show up in the midst of the holiday season.

"It's just a feel-good moment for our community and the Wabash Valley," said Dave Patterson, executive director of the Vigo County Convention and Tourism Bureau. "We just can never have enough of that."

This tournament's roots extend to the 1990s, and then even deeper to the earliest years of Indiana high school basketball. Before the Classic started in 2000, the old Wabash Valley Tournament became a must-see wintertime draw. During the Valley Tournament's run from 1916 to 1972, as many as 124 teams competed in its one-and-done format until interest and attendance waned in its final years.

Then, in the 1990s, businessman Gary Fears and the local Pizza Huts began staging an annual four-team, two-game Pizza Hut Classic in Hulman Center, featuring the three Vigo County high school teams and Northview's. "At the end of each year's [event], it seems like everybody said, 'I wish it was a tournament,'" Fears recalled earlier this week.

It happened. The Indiana High School Athletic Association made its boldest decision ever in 1997, switching its postseason "Hoosier Hysteria" tournament from its traditional single-class format to a four-class tourney. Three years later, a coalition of Fears, former coaches Pat Rady of Terre Haute South and Jim Jones of Terre Haute North, South Athletic Director Deb Webster and local advertising executive Brian Miller crafted the Pizza Hut Wabash Valley Classic. It debuted as a 12-team event in December of 2000.

"And then, from the second year on, we always had 16 teams," Fears said.

Pizza Hut ended its tenure as tournament sponsor in 2015, and First Financial Bank stepped into that role. It then became the First Financial Wabash Valley Classic. Ticia Wright — the public relations and administrative officer to the president at First — told her boss, bank president and CEO Norman L. Lowery, that she'd help with the tournament in any way needed. Lowery asked her to be the tournament director, Wright recalled this week.

"I'd been a huge fan of this tournament," Wright said.

Her kids attended South and watched games with her. As a middle schooler, Wright's son and some friends scanned the pre-tournament programs to choose up a fantasy-league-type team of Classic players. "They would get behind these kids that they didn't even know and follow them through the tournament," Wright said.

Sponsoring the Classic was "a no-brainer" for the bank, she said. "It was a good fit for us, and we wanted to look at ways to make it more beneficial to the schools."

The bank spends $18,000 to sponsor each tournament, Wright explained, and those funds help pay tournament expenses and some revenue to the participating schools. Separately, ticket sales, of course, provide a key source of covering expenses and generating some financial boost for the schools involved. Concession proceeds go to the host schools, and Jarvis called that "a huge, huge boost" for the host schools.

Wright used 2019 as an example of the Classic's financial impact. Ticket sales totaled $72,005 in that Classic, and expenses were just above $22,000, she said. The total disbursement to participating schools — which varies from year to year, because of swings in ticket sales — was $59,999 that year. Thus, in 2019, the top eight teams that advanced into the Classic's fourth and final day gained $3,620 each, while the eight that finished after three days of play received $3,237, Wright said.

"Hopefully, it doesn't hurt anybody to play in this tournament," Wright said, "and they can leave with some money to put into their programs."

After the Pizza Hut era ended, First continued the tournament's tradition of feeding the teams on Day 1 and Day 4, with Chick-fil-A providing those meals. Likewise, B&B Foods donates meals for the pre-tournament luncheon, and Hamilton Center provides tournament T-shirts to the teams.

First generates the Classic tournament programs, and invites schools to sell their own advertisements in that publication — a proceed the schools can keep, Wright said. This year, three schools — Greencastle, Northview and Robinson — took advantage of that opportunity, selling more than $14,000 worth of ads, topped by Greencastle's $9,000 total. Other schools could do the same in coming years.

"There are growth opportunities here," Wright said of that project.

As for the overall economic impact to Terre Haute, Patterson of the tourism bureau estimated that windfall at $500,000 to $750,000 each year.

Attendance last year neared 2,000 daily, Jarvis said. Around 1,400 all-tournament tickets were sold in the 2022 Classic, as well as 300 single-day passes. For a single game, the capacity of the North and South gymnasiums is about 2,000. Crowds have grown since the 2020 Classic, when the COVID-19 pandemic limited the audiences to player families and two sites — North and South — were used, Jarvis said.

"I think, if anything, COVID made people remember how special a tournament this is," Jarvis said.

Casual fans unconnected to a specific team also show up, often rooting for the small schools. Such hopes connect to the Classic's origins. And while the two largest schools, North (1,432 students) and South (1,463), have won 14 of 23 Classic titles, smaller participants have also won it all, including 425-student Linton last December.

"I love high school basketball," Wright said, "and this is such a throwback to before there was class basketball. This tournament speaks to that."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.