Mark Montieth: Milan championship is a story almost too good to be true

They teach you in Screenwriting 101 that all great stories have a conflict to be resolved. So when University of Southern California film school grad Angelo Pizzo had the germ of an idea for a movie based on Milan’s 1954 state basketball championship, he went looking for the tensions, the controversies, the obstacles along the way.

Dissension within the roster perhaps? Resistance to the coach maybe? Injuries, illness, family problems? Surely there was something that had to be overcome to lend some drama.

Pizzo didn’t find nearly enough drama to fuel a movie. The players liked one another. They liked their coach. The townspeople mostly got along with one another and supported the team. Pizzo was left with no choice but to make up the fictional friction for “Hoosiers,” regarded by many as the greatest sports movie.

“I decided to create the figures from whole cloth, and I went from there,” he said.

Pizzo made that comment to a gathering of about 1,000 people at Milan High School’s gymnasium last Saturday during a celebration of the team’s historic championship. Five of the 10 players who dressed for the state tournament games were on hand, along with a cheerleader, Patty Bohlke Marshall. Gov. Eric Holcomb was there. So was former Gov. Mitch Daniels, who used Milan’s underdog story as part of his first campaign for the office. National broadcasters Jim Nantz and Bob Costas recorded video tributes. Fans came from as far away as South Dakota, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Tennessee to meet the stars and role players.

Two days later, Bobby Plump was still shaking his head over the enduring popularity of Milan’s team and his game-winning shot.

“It’s amazing,” he said.

Why all the fuss over a 70-year-old high school championship?

Turns out lack of conflict can make a good storyline, as well. The Milan story is basketball’s version of “The Andy Griffith Show” and seems to rerun nearly as often. It reflects wholesome small-town values that never existed as perfectly as our nostalgia-tinted lenses would have us believe but still reminds us of a simpler, more innocent time.

Combine that with a David and Goliath theme—Milan, with an enrollment of 161, defeating Muncie Central, with an enrollment 10 times larger—and the drama of a game-winning shot just ahead of the final buzzer, and you have a yarn suitable for a Hollywood script.

The only other state championship that can match it for dramatic plot is the one Crispus Attucks—the first all-Black school in the country to win an integrated state championship—captured the following year. None of the others came close, and it’s unimaginable that any in the future, including the games to be played on Saturday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, can come close.

“Hoosiers,” released in 1986, reignited the glowing embers of the story, although it bears no resemblance to reality beyond the game-winning shot. The team and the movie are in lockstep today. People who knew Milan’s story wanted to see the movie. People who saw the movie wanted to learn more about Milan’s story. They co-exist symbiotically.

Life in Milan in the ’50s actually wasn’t as bucolic as you might think. Three of the players from the championship team dealt with harsh realities that could have added drama to the movie.

Plump’s mother died when he was 5 years old. The youngest of six kids, he got the leftover bathwater on weekends.

Bob Engel’s father bailed out when he was 3. His father returned to Milan during Engel’s sophomore season to watch him play and asked the coach if Bob would meet with him. Bob said no.

Ron Truitt’s parents were divorced, and his father was an alcoholic. He was a little wild in his youth, but the townspeople looked after him as best they could.

But it worked out in the long run for all three, as well as everyone else on the team. Engel settled in Portage, Michigan, after serving two years in the Army and worked for General Motors. Truitt got a scholarship to play at the University of Houston. He wound up coaching a team to a Texas state championship and became a school administrator. A middle school and a tournament in Houston are named for him.

Plump, of course, is the focal point of the Milan story. It’s fortunate he was the one to hit the game-winning shot because he’s the most talkative player on the team. He doesn’t seek publicity but never minds reliving the experience and does it with enthusiasm.

“It’s kind of fun,” he said. “I like to see the expression on people’s faces when I tell the stories.”

It’s a well-polished act by now, honed by endless takes. Whenever he and Pizzo appear together somewhere, he laughs and says, “One more time!”

Although Pizzo exercised creative license when writing “Hoosiers,” the nonfictional elements of Milan’s story aren’t lost on him.

“One of the reasons why we are here [was] the love they had for each other … . The connectedness they had as a team and as a community was what made them so successful,” he told the fans filling the bleachers in Milan’s gymnasium. “I’ve been watching some of these NCAA games, and the teams that are really good … they know where each other are on the court. The thing about this team is, they always had a second sense about what role each one played.

“I just had a feeling that that connectedness and that love they had for each other and that understanding of who should do what at what time was almost unconscious energy. And it was completely selfless. It was always the team first.

“This team has inspired so many people, including me.”

Among those inspired to make the trip to Milan last weekend was Steve Cutter, a 1980 Milan grad and basketball team member who was voted into the Ripley County Hall of Fame. He drove up from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a five-hour trip, and headed home immediately after getting a few more signatures on a small ball he brought with him.

He grew up in Milan, so the story has seeped into his DNA by now. A film of the final-game victory over Muncie Central was shown in the gymnasium every year during his school days, and for him at least, it never got old.

“They didn’t let us forget it, and we didn’t want to forget it,” he said.

“It’s our claim to fame. If we talk about basketball, we talk about this. I still tell people about it every time I talk about my high school career.”

Milan’s story resonated in all the small towns in Indiana, including the neighboring rivals. John Ward grew up in Osgood, 10 miles away. He played on the seventh-grade team that defeated Milan’s formerly undefeated squad—made up largely of the group that won state five years later—in the county tourney, 17-15. He’s a cousin to Roger Schroder, one of the ’54 team members in attendance on Saturday.

“I’ve known these kids forever,” said Ward, formerly the principal at Jac-Cen-Del High School. “They’re almost like family to me; they really are.”

Ward, who watched the final game at the home of an Osgood teacher, was amid the estimated crowd of 40,000 people who greeted the Milan players when they returned from Indianapolis the next day. He felt the same pride the Milan residents felt that day. Still does, in fact.

“Down here on the corner is where I stood—where the hotel that burned down was,” he said. “I stood right on that corner and watched them come across the railroad tracks.

“I can still see them down there. Oh, boy. They were something else.”

The formal program for Saturday’s celebration lasted about 90 minutes, ending at 12:30 p.m. After a break for lunch, Milan’s players sat behind tables in the gymnasium to sign autographs. Plump and Schroder were joined by Gene White, who had been inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame the previous Wednesday, and Ray Craft and Rollin Cutter. Pizzo and two “Hoosiers” cast members, Brad Long and Dr. Steve Hollar, joined them.

The last round of signatures was collected at 4 p.m., more than three hours after the signings began. Nobody was turned away, and some, such as Doug Bradley from Loogootee and his brother-in-law, Jim Wilmes of Jasper, took advantage and collected armloads of goods—T-shirts, photographs, magazine covers and the like. They said most of their items will be donated to a charity fundraiser for cancer research, but a few will be kept.

“I’ll tell you what, that’s the longest time we’ve ever signed,” Plump said later. “People wanted to talk.”

The unspoken but obvious underlying subplot of Saturday’s event was the fact that opportunities for such mass gatherings are dwindling. The surviving team members are 87 or 88 years old. It’s remarkable that six are still alive, including actor Bill Jordan, who lives in California. There will be more appearances, of course. Plump and a teammate or two will be honored at halftime of the NIT semifinal game at Hinkle Fieldhouse on Tuesday, in fact.

Requests for their presence will continue for as long as they are able, but their story—the nonfictional one that connects people—will live forever. It only seemed too good to be true.•

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Montieth, an Indianapolis native, is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer. He is the author of three books: “Passion Play: Coach Gene Keady and the Purdue Boilermakers,” “Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis,” and “Extra Innings: My Life in Baseball,” with former Indianapolis Indians President Max Schumacher.