I got into the radio business because I wanted to broadcast big games like the one the Warsaw girls basketball team will play Saturday night in Indianapolis.

I listened to announcers who made me feel like I was at the game, even when I wasn’t. I have spent my life trying to do the same for others.

Along the way, I have experienced several ‘side benefits’ over 34 years.

One of those is watching young people “get it.” Even more, I love it when an entire group of young people get it at the same time.

I have seen that in the last 14 months in the Lady Tigers.

If you are a parent or grandparent, or even an aunt or uncle, you know how hard it is to watch kids struggle.

The Lady Tigers struggled last season. They finished 14-8 against a schedule that was much harder than the year before when this young team burst onto the big-girl basketball stage.

But there was a moment in the middle of that season that I can point to as “the moment of truth” for the girls and the team that started them down the path to what will happen Saturday night.

Warsaw was 8-4 in late December of 2023, and things just weren’t clicking.

There were a lot of reasons why they were having such a hard time.

Part of it was the attention they received during the season before when they collectively wowed us with their skill as freshmen and sophomores.

Part of it was a quest for recognition.

Part of it was the fact that they were young and didn’t know any better. All understandable things.

They went to play a Huntington North team that was struggling too, and they lost in what felt like the low point of the season — but it wasn’t.

The next week, they played in a tournament at Center Grove. They lost to a very average Brownsburg team in the semifinal and then were blown out by Jeffersonville in the consolation game — a game they were never in and didn’t look like they were into playing.

Maybe it was the long bus ride home giving them time to think. Maybe it was the days off they got during the holidays.

Either way, they figured out they couldn’t keep going the way they were going and achieve anything worthwhile.

And they took the steps necessary to change their path.

The payoff was immediate, as the Lady Tigers won their last six games of the regular season. Even though they lost in their sectional game against rival Northridge, the vibes the team is sending out made it clear that a corner had been turned.

Since that pair of losses at Center Grove, Warsaw has lost two games — the Northridge game and a regular season game last month at Homestead.

The difference between “the before and after pictures” of this group of girls was remarkable.

I could see in their faces that they were taking a different approach to playing basketball together, and working through life together.

I saw joy — the kind of joy that comes from the heart and goes well beyond the boundaries of any basketball court or the walls of any locker room.

I saw people beginning to love each other.

And that’s where this season started.

From there, Warsaw won their first 18 games. They did it with speed and power, with skill in every aspect of the game. They are good rebounders even though they aren’t very tall. They are relentless in their quest to separate opponents from the basketball and quickly move the ball up the floor and scoring in less than seven seconds.

And they’re good at that.

Only a true team could do that.

They are the best collection of outside shooters that Warsaw has ever seen. They have topped the school’s 3-pointer record each of their three years of varsity basketball.

How?

They have experienced the joy of “understanding.”

They get it now. And nothing that happened before that moment matters anymore.

They have found something that will be valuable to them long after the echoes of Saturday night in the fieldhouse have dissipated.

Someday it will make them better people, better moms, better leaders and better employees.

And we can all understand the impact of that.

The post The joy of understanding appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

WARSAW — Warsaw Community Schools is excited to announce that the Warsaw Winter Percussion Ensemble secured a 4th place finish out of 18 schools in their class at the Indiana Percussion Association Prelims competition held this past weekend.

This outstanding performance has earned them a coveted spot in the State Finals, scheduled for April 6, at Indiana State University.

The ensemble's success is a testament to their hard work, dedication and exceptional guidance.

The post Warsaw Winter Percussion Ensemble heads to state finals appeared first on News Now Warsaw.

WARSAW — A lot of people treat me like I am smart or something.

I am not, but I do try to learn a little bit about a lot of things so that when subjects come up that I don’t know much about, I can at least ask an intelligent question to start a conversation that will educate me about that subject.

Knowledge is power.

I got asked a lot this weekend “what television channel is NorthWood’s game at the state finals being broadcast on?”

My response was simple: “There isn’t one?”

The looks were those of confusion.

I want to explain this to all of you in the hope you’ll understand, and I am going to do my very best to relate the facts of this without injecting a lot of my opinions about it.

The IHSAA announced in October that the state football finals would be exclusively broadcast online at IHSAA.TV.

They also announced that they were charging us to watch it — $15 for each game and $20 for an all-games pass.

Heath Shanahan, IHSAA’s Director of Broadcasting/Executive Producer explained the thinking.

“Livestreaming has become a fact of life in the television world over the past few years,” he says. “More often, programming is being moved from linear (or conventional) television to streaming platforms.”

The news release distributed Oct. 31 went on to say that Indiana state finals events have been shown on that web site for some time and making it the exclusive video home of those finals is just the natural next step in how these types of events are being made available to the public at this time in history.

But in that same release, however, they admitted there was more to it than that.

As time has gone along, the IHSAA has had more and more trouble finding television partners in Indianapolis and other places around the state to broadcast on. When I was growing up, WTTV-4 in Indianapolis was the flagship station of a TV network that included Fort Wayne, South Bend, Evansville, Terre Haute and other cities from Lake Michigan to the Ohio River. Anyone in Indiana who wanted to see the state finals could see them on the free, over-the-air network.

Times change, and so has the local television industry. Like a slow fade to black on a TV show scene, Indianapolis broadcast stations unplugged from the IHSAA. Most recently, the Bally Sports cable network produced those broadcasts, but that channel isn’t even available on our cable systems.

Then came the news that Bally Sports was beginning bankruptcy proceedings.

In June Bally Sports Indiana informed the IHSAA that their partnership would end.

“They called and said they weren’t allowed to renew the contract with us,” IHSAA Assistant Commissioner Chris Kaufman said. “It was an amicable parting and, all in all, Bally was a great partner. We enjoyed working with them and we will stay in touch.”

The quickest and easiest answer was to make their own website the only place for Hoosiers and anyone around the world where the internet reached to watch.

From the IHSAA’s perspective, they now have the potential for a lot more revenue generation because not only will they make money from the state finals ticket sales, but they are charging (basically) the same amount to view it online as they do for us to buy a ticket.

Again, trying to be objective about this, here is the reality of what happened with the Panthers on Saturday.

I would love to have watched NorthWood play Saturday. I’ll bet a lot of you would have, too.

I’ll bet a thousand football fans combined from the seven other Northern Lakes Conference schools would like to have watched. Jimtown fans. Bremen fans … lots of fans. But the question is: Would you pay $15 to watch their game online?

It’s not that we don’t care … a lot of us were cheering for the Panthers Saturday. But we were getting updates from social media or in some other way, not watching live on the internet.

Again, I am stepping lightly here as I say this, but fewer and fewer people outside of the immediate areas of teams playing in those state finals contests will pay attention at all to the state finals.

Here’s the biggest problem in all of this: there is no easy solution! Lowering the cost of the live video to, say, $5 per game would be a good starting point. But, as the IHSAA says, this is the way of the future, and that cost is more likely to go up as ticket prices go up.

That’s a fact.

Also a fact: Not all things presented as “progress” make things better.

* * * 

Roger Grossman has been covering local sports in Kosciusko County for more than 30 years and is employed with News Now Warsaw. You can reach him at  rgrossman@kensington.media.

The post Why you couldn’t watch NorthWood Saturday appeared first on News Now Warsaw.