The Jackson Center Tigers are 26-0 and headed to the state tournament, where they play Columbus Africentic in a Division IV semifinal Thursday morning at the Schottenstein Center.
“Tigers have all the tools to win,” trumpets the banner in the front window at Napa Auto Parts.
At Phil’s Market, the big likeness of a tiger is flanked by the bill of fare: “Pizza $12, Breadsticks $3, Watching Tigers basketball ... priceless.”
But the most impressive embrace of this unbeaten team doesn’t come from downtown merchants or fellow students. It’s from a select fraternity of fellow basketball players in this town of 1,388.
Only one boys team here has won the state. The 1985 Tigers beat Graysville Skyvue, 63-61, and everyone here seems to know the tale. It’s a storybook script that rivals “Hoosiers.”
Late in the game, Jackson Center not only was trailing, but it had lost both of its starting guards — Keith Doseck and then Tony Meyer — to fouls.
When Meyer fouled out, Tigers coach Jerry Harmon stunned everyone when he put junior Jeff Teeters into the game. “Quite frankly, he hadn’t really played one quality minute at the varsity level the whole season,” remembered Meyer.
And yet, what he did next has been an indelible memory in this town for 27 years.
Dave Ross called the game for WMVR in Sidney that night. Tuesday, he found the transcript of his radio broadcast.
Jackson Center had managed to tie the game, but with 11 seconds left Skyvue was fouled. Their player missed the front end of a 1-and-1 and this was Ross’s take:
“Rebound (Brian) Scoggin at 10 seconds. Up to Teeters. Teeters to (Shawn) Lenhart with six. Lenhart to Teeters ... He’ll take the shot. ... IT’S GOOD! ... IT’S GOOD!. ...WE WIN! ...WE WIN! ... JACKSON CENTER WINS THE STATE CHAMPIONSHIP.”
Meyer, now the school treasurer, said a video clip from the postgame celebration shows “our coach running around the court like a rabid dog and one of the security officers actually stops him. Everyone laughs at that, but I had him by 30 feet. I was doing circles around the gym.”
Walk in the front entrance of the school now and immediately on your right is a trophy case dedicated to that 1985 team. Along with all the trophies, it holds a glorious black-and-white photo that shows Teeters, moments after his game-winner, hoisted on the shoulders of his jubilant teammates, coaches and some fans who rushed the floor at Ohio State’s St. John Arena.
His eyes are closed, his mouth is open, his arms are pointed to the heavens. It is the look of pure ecstasy.
“It couldn’t have happened to a better guy, he’s just a great person,” Meyer said of Teeters, who is now a prominent attorney in Cincinnati. “You can’t believe the whole story. His father had passed away 10 years earlier on Christmas Eve. He had played JV ball that year and it’s still surreal when you try to figure out why coach put him in. We had 10 seniors on the team, but he went with Jeff and his 12-footer was perfect.”
When you come into Jackson Center now, be it on Highway 119 or Route 65, you see a sign at the corporation limit celebrating that 1985 Class A championship along with a pair of Division IV state titles the girls teams won in 1995 and 2001.
With their feat celebrated so long here, you wonder if the guys from ’85 are having a déjà vu moment.
Meyer, whose son Alex is a starting guard on the current Tiger team, said this state tournament run has stirred some old memories — and more.
“I’ve talked to my teammates and to a man we all agree we had our day and we dream about other kids doing it. When you grow up in a small town like this, you just hope somebody else gets to experience what we have. For 27 years people have talked about our game. We’re ready for them to talk about somebody else’s.”
And this seems to be the perfect team for that.
Not only are they unbeaten on the court, but they are almost unparalled in the classroom.
Four of the five starters on coach Scott Elchert’s team — including 6-foot-5 Andy Hoying, who leads the Tigers in scoring, rebounds and assists — have perfect 4.0 grade-point averages. Last season, the team won the Ohio basketball coaches association’s award for the highest team GPA in the state.
“Our players are great students, great kids, great leaders. Everybody in the school looks up to them,” said Jackson Center Superintendent Bill Reichert, who grew up in Dayton View, played on Chaminade Julienne’s state runner-up team in 1991, was an assistant coach on Joe Staley’s staff at CJ and then coached the Tigers before moving into administration.
He sees several common threads between this year’s Tigers team and his old CJ squad:
“We have a fantastic coach who does a great job preparing our kids. I see a lot of similarities between he and Joe. And I remember how guys on our team got closer and closer the deeper we went in the tournament and the bond our team here has is tremendous.”
Interestingly it was forged from an experience that was the flip side of this season.
Five years ago the Tigers went 2-19.
Elchert was determined to change the fortune of the team by fortifying the chemistry and he started that process by locking the players and coaches in the gym for three days and two nights of a summer practice session.
Players brought their own food, slept on the gym floor and checked their cellphones — and attitudes — at the door.
“It worked,” said Hoying, who was an incoming freshman. “We got a lot closer.”
Last weekend the Tigers easily pushed aside Jefferson, a perennial Division IV power, to advance to Columbus.
What was just as impressive was that Tiger fans packed Trent Arena with more than 1,000 people all wearing orange T-shirts. The booster club had given free shirts to anybody who bought a tournament ticket, and most of the town responded.
When the Tigers made the nearly 60-mile trek back home after the game, their bus was met by two fire trucks, two police cars with lights flashing and a caravan of townsfolk for the last seven miles of the trip along Route 119.
As the bus slowly wended its way around the town, the players hung out the windows to high-five their friends and in so doing seemed to have more than enough reach to be able to grab that torch the guys from ’85 are holding out for them.
About the Author