the war ball

The Batesville Bulldogs have a long history of basketball success - thirty Sectional titles, 10 Regional crowns and two Semi-State championships.  Their trophy cases are overflowing.  Nestled in the corner of one, we discovered a championship ball from 1943.  A Semi-State championship to be more specific.  After searching unsuccessfully for a corresponding trophy, we moved our hunt to more cases.  Failure.  Why would a school so steeped in basketball history (their first Sectional crown was in 1926) not have a trophy honoring a Final Four appearance?  Lost, stolen, misplaced?  AD Mark Ferguson addressed our concerns, "well, it was during the war."  Maybe all available metal and energy had been put into the war effort.  Those answers are better left to historians.  What we can imagine is, seventy years after the Allied invasion of France (D-Day), that every home front sacrifice, no matter how small, was made in the name of freedom.  CGS.