It’s been a banner year for Indiana sports teams. There have been perfect records and playoff runs for professional and collegiate teams in basketball, football and more.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It has been a banner year for Indiana sports teams. All of the state’s major league professional teams, as well as a few universities, have racked up impressive winning records. For fans, it is a thrilling time after some truly lackluster seasons. Team owners, coaches and players say this year’s success follows years of investment and development. Samantha Horton with member station WFYI reports.
SAMANTHA HORTON, BYLINE: For sports fans in Indiana, the excitement started early in the year when Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish made it to the College Football National Championship. And in the spring, the Indiana Pacers were in the NBA finals.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #1: (Chanting) Let’s go, Pacers.
HORTON: In the fall, the Indiana Fever made it to the WNBA playoffs.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #2: (Chanting) Defense.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP #2: (Chanting) Defense.
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HORTON: Before each playoff game for the Pacers and Fever, volunteers set rally towels and T-shirts on thousands of arena seats. Fever general manager Amber Cox says the enthusiasm of all those fans motivated the players.
AMBER COX: You want to play for them. You want to continue to show up for them. So, you know, through the tough times they’ve been there for us and have been really our fuel throughout this season.
HORTON: The good news continued in October. The Associated Press ranked Purdue University men’s basketball No. 1 in its annual preseason poll. And now Indiana University football and the Indianapolis Colts are having winning seasons. That’s energized fans like Tom Hinshaw. Before a recent Colts game, he was grilling food and tailgating with friends and family at a new spot a few blocks from the stadium. Hinshaw jokes it may be superstitious, but the group can’t go back to their old spot because they don’t want to make a change while the Colts are on a roll.
TOM HINSHAW: Yeah, you can see that it’s coming together finally this year. We don’t normally get to see home wins.
HORTON: And athletes are getting into the excitement too. Fever point guard Sydney Colson says she has a Colts jersey now, and at basketball games, athletes are showing up for each other.
SYDNEY COLSON: It’s cool to see, like, the sections where it’s several players coming to support the Pacers or the Fever. And that’s cool to see from a city, that all the teams support one another.
HORTON: Amy Metheny says for Indiana University, it’s taken years of strategic building to assemble the winning Hoosiers football team.
AMY METHENY: Lots of discussions. Oh, my gosh. You know, it isn’t like we haven’t wanted to be good in football (laughter). We have. But doing it and competing for it, you know, is very different.
HORTON: Metheny is a lifelong Hoosier who’s in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. She says raising coaches’ salaries and taking advantage of opportunities that can be offered to recruits have helped.
And it’s not just about Indiana teams. Indianapolis, a city that bills itself as a sports capital, has recently hosted several major sporting events, including the NBA and WNBA All-Star games and the U.S. Olympic trials for swimming and diving. The state is also home to the NCAA, three national governing bodies and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Indiana Sports Corp President Patrick Talty says the goal is to make the state an international sports destination.
PATRICK TALTY: We unveiled last year our 2050 Vision, which is the next – the strategy for the next 25 years of the sports strategy. And we really believe that Indiana can be the global epicenter of sport.
HORTON: And that’s something Indiana sports fans say they already know.
For NPR News, I am Samantha Horton in Indianapolis.
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