Mike Lopresti: IHSAA commissioner’s first year was anything but normal

The busy Saturday started for the IHSAA commissioner with a look at his computer.

“There were a few emails. Didn’t answer them yet,” Paul Neidig is saying. “I call them opinion emails.” Unhappy customers. That comes with the job. He had been to North Central to catch some of the girls’ tennis state finals, grabbed lunch, then hustled south to Center Grove High School.

By the time he pulls up in the parking lot, the house is packed for the Class 2A softball championship game. The Pioneer and Sullivan teams are being introduced and Neidig looks at the full stands and thick line of lawn chairs along the outfield fences. He thinks back to a year ago, when every field and gym was quiet and empty. When the pandemic had America, and high school sports in Indiana, by the throat.

“It’s a celebration of what we’ve missed,” Neidig says of the noise around him. “These people didn’t have this last year. The kids didn’t have it; the parents didn’t have it. You didn’t put that shirt on with your school’s name on it. It’s kind of reset us all to understand how important this is. I think people respect it a little bit more because they lost it.”

This is the last week of the first year of Neidig’s era as commissioner. It was never going to be easy. Not the rookie season. Governing high school sports can be so … complicated.

See what happened in the girls’ track meet? Westfield’s Kierstyn Ballard won a medal by finishing seventh in the pole vault. Except she wasn’t even supposed to be in the meet since she didn’t qualify in the regional. There was somehow a bookkeeping foul-up, so the IHSAA and Neidig decided to let her compete, anyway. The fact that she is the daughter of Chris Ballard, the Colts general manager, only added to the plot.

Notice how a commissioner can have a full plate? Then there was COVID.

The pandemic gave birth to a new world: vacant schools, empty stands, remote learning, schedules as fragile and uncertain as the next day’s infection totals. No new commissioner ever faced what Neidig did.

“People weren’t going back and saying, ‘Bobby Cox didn’t do it this way, or Blake Ress didn’t do it this way.’ They didn’t have to,” he says of his predecessors. “I got to write my own path this year.

“July 6 was the day I’ll never forget. That’s the first day our coaches were able to get back in touch with their student-athletes.”

Two weeks at a time

Neidig became commissioner on Aug. 1, replacing the retired Cox. Ahead was a future nobody could be sure about. Neidig still nearly shudders talking about November. If outdoor sports were vulnerable, how about indoor?

“We adopted the term early on: two-week increments,” he says. “We’re not going to presume anything’s going to happen. We’re going to plan for two weeks in the future. Then we were going to plan for the next two weeks and the next two weeks. I think that strategy worked well for us.”

So it seems. The IHSAA will have gotten in every state tournament when baseball finishes next week. No more canceled-due-to-COVID notations in the record books like last spring. There have been plenty of good stories to shove the pandemic from center stage, and Neidig has come to see one. The Pioneer girls have a chance to complete an unprecedented triple crown—taking the volleyball, basketball and softball state titles in one victory lap through the school calendar.

Neidig has seen lots of moments in 2020-2021.

The boys cross-country individual title was won by Angola’s Izaiah Steury, who once was an orphaned shepherd in Ethiopia.

On the same April Saturday night that Gonzaga’s miracle shot beat UCLA in overtime in the NCAA Final Four in Lucas Oil Stadium, Carmel went overtime just down the street at Bankers Life Fieldhouse to hold off Lawrence North for the boys 4A basketball championship. Lawrence North missed 11 of 17 free throws.

Silver Creek’s boys won in 3A. So did the Silver Creek girls.

Western Boone scored 10 points in the final 1:36 to shock Fort Wayne Luers for the 2A football championship 36-35, the last three points coming with seven seconds left on a 38-yard field goal by Josiah Smith. His father, Hunter, used to punt for the Colts.

Warren Central, Lawrence Central and North Central were all tied for the lead going into the final event, the 1600 relay, at the girls state track meet. None of them won the title. Cathedral’s victory in the relay sent the Irish past all of them.

Noblesville beat Guerin Catholic 3-0 for the 3A girls soccer championship. The schools playing for the title of all Indiana are 5.6 miles apart. The Noblesville girls haven’t lost a soccer game since 2018.

Widespread champions

With boys golf and baseball still out, 26 different schools had won at least one state title. Carmel had won seven, while re-proving a familiar adage: The only three things certain in Indiana are death, taxes and the Carmel girls swimming team. The Greyhound tsunami rolled to its 35th state title in a row. The swimmers on the last Carmel team not to win the state championship are now in their early 50s.

Zionsville finished 4-5 in the regular football season but didn’t lose again until the 6A championship game with Center Grove. The Trojans ended with a perfect record. So did Covenant Christian in Class A, after surviving a 41-40 shootout with South Adams that included 1,019 yards of total offense.

Barr-Reeve won the Class A boys basketball title and might have been another Milan, if given the chance. The 29-2 Vikings’ only two losses were to 2A champion Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian and 4A winner Carmel, both in overtime.

It was a good year to be young. The state all-around gymnastics title was won by Austyn Dykes, a freshman from Franklin Central. The girls state tennis singles championship went to Molly Bellia, a freshman from South Bend St. Joseph’s. Macy Beeson, a sophomore from Lapel, won the girls’ golf individual title. Her margin was one stroke over Carmel’s Michaela Headlee, another freshman.

Evansville Memorial won the 2A boys soccer championship. The Tigers are now 6-0 in state title games.

Yeah, a lot went on in Paul Neidig’s first year as commissioner. It took some determination for the guy who grew up in the shadows of the Poseyville water tower in southern Indiana.

“I never wavered whether we were doing the right thing,” he says. “I think there are some people who would question that statement. But I never thought going home and waiting for this to leave us was an option. We had to figure out ways how to manage through it.”

Two hours later, the triple crown is complete for Pioneer, with a 4-2 victory. Consider the pandemic year of Madison and Crystabelle Blickenstaff, Mackenzie Walker, Hailey Cripe and Brooklyn Borges. They played for all three state champions for the Panthers.

Think about what they would have lost had the sports year been scuttled. The IHSAA commissioner does.•

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Lopresti is a lifelong resident of Richmond and a graduate of Ball State University. He was a columnist for USA Today and Gannett newspapers for 31 years; he covered 34 Final Fours, 30 Super Bowls, 32 World Series and 16 Olympics. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mjl5853@aol.com.