What do a Larry Bird totem pole, a burger-and-beer joint called Plump’s Last Shot and the largest high school gym in the world have in common?
They’re all locations on a new state tourism website highlighting the popular, quirky, obscure and historic hotspots of Hoosier Hysteria.
The Indiana Destination Development Corporation in August launched the Basketball Experience IN Indiana campaign as part of a new effort to bring hoop-and-hardwood enthusiasts to the state to enjoy “a culture, a passion and an emotion for sport you can’t find anywhere else,” touts the state website.
Noelle Szydlyk
The site currently has more than 60 locations listed, including famed high school gyms, large stadiums, unique museums, basketball-themed artworks and historic placards.
State tourism officials for years have bounced around the idea of creating a basketball-themed campaign to attract visitors from around the country to Indiana, explained Noelle Szydlyk, the IDDC’s director of sports tourism and event planning.
That idea finally became a reality after representatives of the Hoosier Gym in Knightstown and the Milan ’54 Museum, both of which are associated with the cult-classic movie “Hoosiers” starring Gene Hackman, reached out to the IDDC for help cross promoting their sites.
Soon, that effort morphed into a statewide project dedicated to all-things basketball.
The initial locations for the campaign were selected by a committee made up of famed sports historians and writers like Bill Benner and Jim Russell, along with a host of others involved in the sport, who provided a “knowledge dump” for the project, noted Szydlyk.
“They had places in mind that I would have never known were there unless you just read a bunch of books about basketball in Indiana, which most of these people had either written or contributed to in some way,” she said.
So far, awareness of the website and campaign has grown mostly through word-of-mouth or grassroots efforts from local groups, Szydlyk explained. The website was only officially promoted for one day during this year’s state fair.
That will change next year, when the IDDC plans to start heavily advertising the site leading up to the NBA All-Star Game, which will be played inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse in downtown Indianapolis on Feb. 18.
The campaign and website are included in an NBA event app that allows people who visit the locations on the list to earn points that can be used towards buying tickets, merchandise or other items during the all-star game.
But the website aims to do more than just promote high-profile events.
It’s the first long-term sports tourism campaign ever undertaken by the state destination agency, Szydlyk said. A continuing goal will be getting more people to high school basketball games, which have seen a major decline in attendance over the last 30 years.
In 1990, around 1 million people bought a ticket to a tournament game. By 2019, that number had plummeted to just 339,900, according to data from the Indiana High School Athletic Association.
“We have a ton of historic and architecturally historic high school gyms in Indiana,” Szydlyk said. “The best way to get people inside is for them to buy an $8 ticket and go watch a game and then explore the gym while they’re there.”
The state is launching a similar campaign next year highlighting motorsports with the same goal in mind: increasing awareness and attendance at the dozens of small, locally owned racetracks around Indiana.
Niche sports tourism campaigns like that are something the IDDC has only recently been able to undertake, explained Szydlyk. In the last two years, staffing at the agency jumped from around four to 15 as part of a major push to promote Indiana across the nation and instill pride in the state’s sports heritage.
“Our staff has grown because it’s important for us to share our Indiana stories,” she said. “Specific sites about motorsports and basketball are very much storytelling opportunities to talk about why Indiana is a great place to live, work, play and visit.”
And the basketball campaign isn’t done yet. Szydlyk said people can submit suggestions for locations or events that have a chance to be added to the list.
That was the case for a limestone sculpture of Damon Bailey, the state’s all-time men’s high school leading scorer who was recruited to play at Indiana University by Bobby Knight when he was in the eighth grade.
The statue located in Bailey’s hometown of Heltonville was included on the website after someone submitted it as a potential location.
Szydlyk said there’s no doubt that more sites, events and unique basketball opportunities will be added in the future. After all, this is Indiana, the home of Hoosier Hysteria, where every town and city holds a gold nugget of basketball history.
“If you’re really a basketball junkie, man, there are a lot of good places to see and just interesting things to learn here,” she said.
