PLYMOUTH – Friday a familiar sports face will be in Plymouth for a special banquet that kicks off a special sports weekend in the city.
Former Plymouth basketball head coach Steve Yoder who was also head coach at Ball State University and the University of Wisconsin as well as an NBA scout, will be at Christo’s Banquet Center for the Marshall County Museum’s Nostalgic Narratives Dinner, part of the festivities opening up the special “County of Champions Sports Room” in the museum.
Yoder graduated from Plymouth High School and took over the Plymouth basketball program winning the schools first regional championship in 1970 and taking his team to a final eight appearance falling to Carmel in the semi-state final at Fort Wayne.
Before that year the last time Plymouth had won a sectional championship was when he was a member of the team in 1957.
“That was our junior year and the whole team was coming back other than two guys,” said Yoder. “Bill Nixon, Chuck Johnson, Richie Schultz, Larry Hamel, we were all back. We won (the sectional) in ’57 and we were supposed to win in ’58, but we all know what ‘supposed to’ means and what actually happens. It’s usually two different things.”
“At the time in South Bend one of the big sports writers – Joe Bolan – had picked us to win the regional that year,” he said. “We didn’t win the sectional. But back in those days, there was nothing bigger in Plymouth than the sectional. There were 14 teams coming into that sectional and there was only one team they all wanted to beat and that was us. Until I was coaching I didn’t realize that your players need to know that too.”
Yoder returned to Plymouth 10 years older and 10 years wiser.
“I had some success (at PHS) athletically and academically,” he said. “But when you come back you’re coming back in a completely different situation. I wasn’t the head coach so I didn’t have that pressure but I was able to work with guys who’d been head coaches and knew what players went through. You had to change the culture there, and it wasn’t changed just by me, it was the other coaches too like Jack Mayfield and Marvin Tutor.”
“I knew I had reached my players when back in 1970 one of them told their Dad ‘don’t ask me anymore why I’m not shooting the ball more. Coach Yoder will tell me what to do on the basketball floor and you tell me what to do at home,'” said Yoder. “And it was the player’s father that told me that.”
One thing that Yoder learned early as a young coach was a simple rule.
“Players need to know who their best players are and when things get tough they have to be involved,” he said. “If the players realize who their best players are a coach has a chance to be successful. If the coaches have to keep pointing it out you’re going to be in some tough battles.”
Yoder – as with most successful coaches – realizes it was having good players that gives you that success. It was something that helped him as a professional scout with the Indiana Pacers and the New York Knicks.
“It doesn’t matter what level you are at you want to have the best players you can possibly get,” said Yoder. “If you don’t have that, you aren’t going to be successful.”
He was lucky to have a pretty good one early in his career at Plymouth, the Pilgrims first Indiana All Star, Steve Phillips.
“He was that good a player and that good a person,” said Yoder. “The funny thing is that the only reason Plymouth got Steve Phillips was because of consolidation. He was in junior high at West School. He started for me as a freshman on the varsity. You never saw him walking around anywhere when he didn’t have a basketball in his hands.”
Phillips played college basketball at Indiana State. Two of his team mates also played division one basketball, Rick Williams and Jerry Kralovansky started at Pepperdine in California. Williams transferred back to Indiana State and eventually played pro ball in Europe.
“We had a deep bench and a tough starting five,” said Yoder of the 1970 regional champs. “That was a very special time. I remember winning the regional at Elkhart and (long time Plymouth coach and also a former Mayor of the city) Art Thomas came to the bench after the game and he said ‘I never thought I’d see the day this would happen’ and he had tears in his eyes. That was a very special time for a lot of reasons.”
Festivities for the opening of the Marshall County Museum’s County of Champions Sports Room start at noon Friday with a Brown Bag luncheon series talk on Hoosier sports legends starting at noon. The banquet that evening at Christo’s starts with social hour at 5:30 p.m. and the premiere of the room itself will be Saturday from 1-4 p.m.
