For padawans and other folks who don’t know “Hoosiers,” a quick plot summary: “Hoosiers” is the story of the smallest basketball club to ever play for an all-comers state championship, the “Hickory Huskers” whose 8-man squad somehow overcomes the biggest and baddest hoops programs in Indiana to triumph in a David-vs-Goliath playoff run. Former sea captain Norman Dale (Gene Hackman), portrayed as a hoops-preparation genius but also as flawed of a bench-coach as Bobby Knight, winds up back in the Navy after slugging one of his players who was fired up at courtside during a college basketball game, and getting suspended by the NCAA. His only chance left to coach basketball again is at little Hickory, where his best friend is the Principal. Dale’s coaching methods are so unorthodox that players walk off the team, parents revolt, and the City Council holds a meeting to vote Dale out of the program altogether. (Readers from the “Coach Carter” generation know where that movie’s plot was lifted from now.) Meanwhile, senior Jimmy Chitwood, Hickory’s top blue-chip prospect, is found brooding after a family tragedy and not playing on the basketball team. But Chitwood’s got a soft spot for Coach Dale because Dale is the only coach in Hickory who didn’t put undue pressure on Chitwood to suit-up and play. Jimmy walks into the City Council meeting and tells the basketball boosters he’ll play for the Huskers, but only if Dale remains the head coach. The fire-the-coach ballot is torn up, and Jimmy’s leadership causes even more kids to come back to the team just as Coach Dale’s precise fundamentals begin to take hold. Hickory wins its local postseason tourney in a brutal battle, and advances to a history-making championship berth by means of very low-scoring, comeback playoff wins (sound familiar?), then winds up playing South Bend in Indiana’s prestigious basketball finals. Dale, who has come to grips with himself as a dangerous loose cannon, chooses to sit quietly during the championship tilt’s pregame and opening half. South Bend takes a sizable halftime lead. But when the Huskers have one final chance to come back and win with a long shot, Coach Dale is pushed into a rage again as the Hickory players seem unhappy with his Xs and Os. “WHAT ON EARTH IS THE MATTER WITH YOU!” Dale cries. Jimmy fixes a pair of steely eyes on him. “I’ll make it,” Jimmy says.
It’s a legendary tale, but it’s not one-of-a-kind. Lots of Cinderella teams win a sports trophy, that’s why we’ve got the special word for them and everything. Besides, there have been so many other movies made about Cinderella champions, before and after “Hoosiers.” Just what is it about the Indiana basketball movie that makes coaches try to use it like a talisman?
We don’t know if Crystal City coach Dan Fox has seen “Hoosiers,” though 90% of Fox’s generation of coaches probably has. Even if not, we’ve got a feeling that the upstart HC and his staff would know what all those crazy coaches see in a Gene Hackman movie. At the very least, the Crystal City Football Booster Club (and The Geek) can relate to the story better. Analysts gave CCHS as much of a chance post-COVID as Hickory was “given a chance” to beat South Bend.
The best way to understand Crystal City’s epic, extraordinary rise to Friday Night Lights relevance is to go back 5 years, and think of what it would’ve been like to be in the stands THEN and to boldly predict THIS SEASON at Crystal:
You: You know what, just give this Fox fellow 4 or 5 years, and Crystal City will be playing in championship games as the smallest brand in the state. Just like Hickory High from “Hoosiers.” They’ll have a Jimmy Chitwood and everything.
Veteran MSHSAA Fan: Ahh ha ha! The Crystal City Hornets? They won’t even have a team by then!
You: Yes they will. They will beat ranked playoff opponents in low-scoring games, just like Hickory in the basketball movie, and then they’ll play in a 2023 District Championship Game on J-98.
Veteran MSHSAA Fan: Ha ha ha! Crystal City to a championship! Hoosiers! Jimmy Chitwood! Well then, I bet you got SECKMAN going 9-0 in 5 years too, don’t ya? And the Hillsboro Hawks usin’ a SHOTGUN QB! Ahh ha ha ha!”
Crystal City football has been far from perfect in ’23. CCHS labored through its regular season, made questionable coaching decisions as the Hornets hit a rough patch in October, and never developed the short-attempt kicking game that could have saved Bradley’s Farm some goal-line drama against Tipton (and which Fox made a point to tell reporters he was working on as of 2 seasons ago). CCHS has had weeks this autumn where the Hornets looked nothing at all like contenders, with the 26,547 fumbles of the Louisiana loss piled on top of the Kentucky Bluegrass blues at Van-Far, sequentially piled on top of the dull, dreadful outcome at Herky as one looks back from now to the team’s unsteady September slate. Fox has worked new quarterbacks, new formations, and new ideas into the mix since then in a successful effort to spark Crystal’s talented offense, but the Hornets’ bruising, athletic defense has gotten better consistently all the while. Freshmen and sophomores don’t quit growing up from August through November.
Besides, you know what? “Hoosiers” isn’t a perfect movie, and this isn’t supposed to be a perfect analogy. On a related note, The Geek does not want his Miracle on Ice + Crystal City theme from Sunday read in the same “storybook” light as the Hickory High comparison, since it could make the CCHS students think Mississippi Magazine sees Hornet Football as outmatched by its playoff rivals, and thus Week 12’s epic win over the #4 ranked Tipton Cardinals ’twas but a “miracle” of fate. Not so. The USA-beats-USSR “Miracle on Ice,” as known to Olympics nerds like The Geek, wasn’t really a miracle. It was, we guess, a miracle that circumstances brought history’s best amateur hockey team and the world’s greatest All-Star team together at exactly the correct moment for the USA to be able to win, but the Russians were getting old and creaky and overconfident. Of course 1980’s inspired Team USA lineup could’ve beaten the aging Soviet Union team – no “miracle” needed. When it comes to the “Hoosiers” and Crystal City Football comparison, we must point out that “Hoosiers” wasn’t really a made-up Hollywood story about a perfect small-school team, but was originally just a clumsy attempt to tell the real life story of the 1954 Milan Indians, Indiana’s tiny basketball program that really did win state over South Bend.
Hackman’s character wasn’t supposed to have smacked anybody, and Milan’s real life team didn’t have kids leave and then come back to the fold. “Hoosiers” played up the drama while soft-pedaling some key stuff, like basketball strategy, and starred Dennis Hopper in a risky move no coach would ever make. Hackman nearly “walked off the team” himself in real life, and was so annoyed while making the picture that Coach Norman Dale’s frowns and scowls are probably just Hackman feeling like he felt that day. Producers brought in Barbara Hershey for a stupid love-story part of “Hoosiers” that everyone wishes wasn’t in it. In the Director’s Cut, “Buddy” leaves the Huskers and then returns in cartoon style (Cardinal Ritter would blush at how easily Buddy changes jerseys). In theatres, Buddy walks off the team, then just shows up on the court. Jimmy Chitwood makes 19 of 20 shots in the movie, but we don’t see his “Division 1” skills. He jumps and shoots.
The “Hoosiers” cult endures because everybody’s been around a small-school sports team at some point in their lifetime, and we recognize that Coach Dale’s problems in the movie are very real things. Hickory has low roster numbers with only 3 maximum kids on the bench. Near the start of the film, there’s just about no one on the bench. Crystal City fans must only think back to 2021 – they know what severe roster-size problems can do to a High School team of any kind.
It was Coach Fox’s answer to 2020-21’s awful CCHS roster numbers that began the sweet musical “number” Crystal City is singing in the playoffs this year. The Geek recalls watching the Hornets in person at the Sunken Place 2 years ago, and thinking that while Crystal’s 15-up roster size HAD to be improved upon, it still looked like there was _something_ good happening as Fox’s offense ran its Navy-style option attack for TD drives against weaker teams. Cyle Schaumburg’s deft, deceptive ball-handling skills were a clue that CALE Schaumburg’s ’22-23 Hornets would be just as tricky 11-on-11. (The spectacular way that Cyle and Cale can fake a handoff, hide the pigskin, and slip around end for a huge gain, one could imagine that the Schaumburg brothers are twins who toil for the Webb City Cardinals.) But the Hornets had hit a rough patch yet again in the W/L column, tuckering out against Chaffee in Week 1 and losing to a 25-man Louisiana team in Week 2. Kelly High visited Bradley’s Farm next in 2021, an unbeaten team having the best streak of success that the relatively new Kelly Hawks had ever experienced in Friday Night Lights. It didn’t just look like Crystal City would lose another game, but it seemed as though Kelly would lay such a licking on CCHS that the Hornets would not possess enough healthy bodies to finish out the season. Instead, the Hornets hosted the bout as a cool, confident unit, and produced 3 amazing TDs against the unbeaten visitors, losing only 35-20, AND staying 99% fresh and upright due to Mississippi Avenue’s newfound ability to control the ball. The defense was starting to become fundamentally sound. Suddenly, the Hornets turned a corner, winning 3 lopsided games in a row before giving SPX issues in a Q-Final.
Roster numbers at CCHS improved when the Class of 2026 arrived on-scene. Much like Hickory High’s “Pistons Firing!” montage late in the movie, Crystal City took its bigger, better pigskin lineup and went crazy with it, winning so many of 2022’s games by blow-out scores that the Hornets pulled an “Alabama” and made their own schedule look weak. The independent status of Sunken Place pigskin gave the CCHS skeptics even more ammo to attack the Hornets as a tin monster. Schaumburg’s squad beat a legitimately decent Class 4 opponent in the 2022 Gateway STEM Jaguars, but everyone wanted to focus on Bradley’s Farm scheduling and beating lowly C4 teams like Confluence Prep. Pundits perceived – or thought that they perceived – Crystal City only climbing the rankings because of its exit from the I-55 Conference. Even though Crystal City Football, counting Jamborees, is 4-2-1 versus the combination of I-55 schools Herculaneum, St. Pius, Perryville, and Bayless since October of ’21. Grandview, a comparable program from the I-55 Conference ranks, lost to the blossoming Chaffee Red Devils in Week 9. Crystal City has knocked it out of the park opposing Chaffee for 10 out of the last 12 quarters of the rivalry. CCHS ’23 would get along just fine in the I-55.
If success against Class 4 made Crystal’s haters get quiet, 2023’s playoff record is making them zip it completely. Some lonely old goat might comment that Hickory (aka Milan) was a STATE championship bid, while the Hornets are vying for District honors at St. Vincent this Friday. But the Crystal City Hornets are already in Round 4 of a 6-layered bracket to determine Class 1’s champion of Missouri, and because of the way MSHSAA has set the tournament up this season, the Crystal City kids have had to take on a field of Central-MO contenders whom we’re sure haters thought would demolish Mississippi Magazine’s little pets. Your so-called “paper lion” just ate some ‘Dogs and Cardinals who would make a few conference splashes of their own around here. Crystal’s defense has grown to play at the level of Jefferson’s fine ‘D.
Now for the fun part – who at Crystal City fits into the Hickory High cast from “Hoosiers?” Coach Dan Fox is Norman Dale, of course, whether he likes it or not. Fox isn’t in the Navy as far as we know, but he uses a lot of Xs and Os straight out of Navy Football, so there’s that! Kanden Bolton is Jimmy Chitwood, without a doubt, the kid you want getting the football against St. Vincent if Crystal City needs exactly one 60-yard play to win and advance to Week 14’s Final Four.
Crystal’s star DB Camden Mayes’ sat out a while and came back as mysteriously as he’d gone, which makes him the “Buddy” of our local Hoosiers team. Nolan Eisenbeis, the Hornets’ junior Iron Man, can be the “Rade” of Crystal City, since Rade is the Hickory High player who’s just that high-motor nightmare for opposing cagers on both ends of the floor. Crystal City’s most devout young man-of-faith on the roster can be “Strap.” But speaking of fierce 2-way players, Seth Senter’s scrap (not Strap) with the Harrisburg Bulldogs did make TGG think of everybody’s FAVORITE “Hoosiers” scene:
“I got him a good one, didn’t I coach?”
“Yeah you did.”
If there’s a way Crystal City ’23 and “Hoosiers” are truly opposites, it’s that Hickory High’s playoff run is suggested to be a one-shot deal only. Coach Dale laughs and walks away when asked if he’ll hold onto the job long-term, because Hickory’s championship season makes it impossible for Dale to avoid his past, making Hickory into ground-zero for the ongoing controversy if he does stay. With CCHS, not only is Fox not going anywhere, but 2024’s lineup doesn’t look half bad.
Caden Raftery, Luke Holdinghausen, and the Hornets’ small crew of senior linemen make up Crystal City’s best chance to crash the pocket, stop St. Vincent’s explosive offense, and “slipper” away with a Cinderella trophy. But it’s been that Class of ’26 which has finally come-of-age in November, much like the Festus Tigers’ sophomore Class of 2021 suddenly grew bigger teeth and claws before taking on Farmington in the 2018 playoffs. There will be 5-10 outstanding juniors who’ll perform for Crystal City next season, with Nolan Eisenbeis leading the pack as a lonely senior-class representative.
Crystal City football is not here for a one-shot circus. Instead, the Sunken Place boys of 2023 are raising AND setting the bar, letting the Hornets of 2024-2026 know exactly what kind of success is expected of them when the team finds its groove. If Eisenbeis and Schaumburg stay as healthy as they are in Week 13, we suspect they’ll groove to another impressive W/L record, and silence those doubters again when next corn harvest – AHEM – next fall rolls around.