BENNETT'S MINUTES: Premiere date set for Pat Rady documentary

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Filmmakers don’t make documentaries about just anybody who has coached Indiana high school basketball, since thousands of different people have held that position for the more than 100 years the popular sport has been played in the state.

Pat Rady is a little different, though.

The Putnam County native currently stands second on the state’s all-time victory list for boys’ coaches with 761 wins, although three active coaches (Bill Patrick of Tippecanoe Valley, Jack Keefer of Lawrence North and J.R. Holmes of Bloomington South) are all within one long tourney run of passing him on that list.

Of all Rady’s accomplishments, perhaps the most mind-boggling recod — and least in jeopardy of being broken — is the fact that he won sectional titles in six different decades.

Just ponder that for a minute ... Remarkable.

As a result, MTC Sports Productions has honored Rady with a documentary called “A Basketball Life.”

The two-hour film, narrated by Greg Rakestraw, includes interviews with former players and colleagues plus footage from many different parts of Rady’s career.

The film will be debuted at a special red carpet event put on by the marketing class of CHS business teacher Patrick Rady, current Clover boss and son of the legendary coach.

The event will take place on Nov. 17 with the following schedule:

5:30 p.m. — Doors open

6 p.m. — Q&A session with coach Rady

7 p.m. — Showing of Pat Rady “A Basketball Life”

Advance tickets for the showing are $5, and DVDs are available for $19.99.

Producers are requesting that fans planning to either attend the event or purchase a DVD take advantage of pre-ordering available through the company’s website.

“By pre-ordering, you are helping us understand how many seats we will need as well as how many DVDs to anticipate on our order,” said Greg Maish of MTC Sports.

To pre-order either a ticket or a DVD, go to www.mtcsports.net and click on the tab at the top of the page labeled “Pat Rady Movie Premiere.”

Links are in gold letters in the middle of the opening screen. The link to a two-minute preview of the video on YouTube is also available on the MTC site.

I have known Pat for 35 years, with most of our contact coming in a reporter-coach capacity. We also worked together in the summers at the Terre Haute Boys Club, where he and the other Vigo County coaches ran a basketball camp.

Much more on this video and special evening — including an interview with the producer, both coach Radys and other former players not included in the film — will be upcoming in this column over the next few weeks.

It will be interesting to see how his career is portrayed, especially since I have been lucky enough to witness so much of it.

Butler powering up

Butler’s men’s basketball program got a huge commitment for the class of 2017 last month when 6-7 forward Christian David chose the Bulldogs over Creighton, Pittsburgh, Miami (Fla.) and Oregon.

David is a Canadian player descended from Philippine ancestry, and plays for a prep school in Vermont.

He is the fourth player to commit to Butler for the class of 2017, and coach Chris Holtmann’s recruiting class is now ranked as the sixth-best in the nation by 247sports.com.

David is ranked as the nation’s 94th best player by 247sports.com, while Ohio forward Kyle Young is No. 84 on the list, 6-5 guard Jerald Butler of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is No. 248 and 6-5 guard Cooper Neese of Cloverdale is ranked No. 291.

Neese is ranked by ESPN as a three-star recruit on a five-star scale, and as the No. 6 player in Indiana and No. 35 in the Midwest region.

The ESPN.com scouting on Neese includes the following strengths:

“Neese is a scoring guard whose primary weapon is his three-point shooting. A shot-maker with deep range, he is arguably just as dangerous shooting off the dribble as he is off the catch. He has a very quick release, can stop quick in transition or come off screens and has a special ability to make tough shots. He’s good with the ball, capable of making some creative moves off the bounce to free himself for his jumper, a very dependable secondary ball-handler and capable of playing some point in a pinch. He also has good size for his position and a solid frame with good shoulders that should be able to fill out nicely.”

His “bottom line” summary by ESPN.com is:

“He’s a shooting and scoring guard who is best described as a combo-guard but much more two than one at this point in his development.”

Signing day is Nov. 9.

Odds and ends

• Greencastle’s football team earned a great distinction during the regular season, being named the “Most Improved” team by John Harrell’s Indiana high school football website.

The Tiger Cubs were one of only two teams in the state (along with North Miami) to go from being 1-8 to 8-1 in the regular season.

As they say, though, everybody is 0-0 again now.

• Sullivan quarterback Trey Powell, one of the state’s passing leaders, was injured in last week’s WIC championship win over Indian Creek and did not play in the fourth quarter.

He is likely headed to Franklin next fall to continue his football career.

• The Western Indiana Conference all-sports standings should be released soon after the completion of the volleyball crossover matches on Saturday.

Sullivan won titles in football, volleyball and girls’ soccer, while Greencastle placed first in girls’ cross country and boys’ tennis.

Edgewood also had two first-place finishes after winning in girls’ golf and boys’ soccer, while the other title was won by West Vigo in boys’ cross country.

• In some other area college commitments, Riverton Parke senior guard Taylor Vauters will play basketball at Division II Purdue-Northwest.

The school is a consolidation of the former Purdue-North Central and Purdue-Calumet campuses.

Davie Inman, a 2015 West Vigo graduate, did not play baseball last year at Indiana State while sitting out as a redshirt.

He has transferred to Florida Southwestern Junior College. Before ever playing a game for the Bucs, Inman took a visit and made a verbal commitment to play in 2018 for Coastal Carolina — this year’s College World Series champions.

• Look for an upcoming College Report feature on Greencastle grad Alec Davis, who is now ranked by golfstat.com among the nation’s top 10 Division III men’s golfers.

Davis is a junior at Rhodes College, which recently completed a strong fall season.

• When Wittenberg’s football team recently defeated DePauw, after previously beating defending champion Wabash, it seemed the Tigers had locked up the North Coast Athletic Conference title.

Hold the phone on that notion, however. The current leader in the NCAC is none of those three teams, which were all chosen to be in the top of the three spots in the standings in pre-season polls.

Undefeated Denison defeated Wittenberg 24-21 on Saturday to break a tie for first place, but the Big Red have the toughest remaining schedule of the league’s four top squads.

Denison plays at DePauw on Oct. 29 (2 p.m. kickoff), then hosts Wabash the following week.

The final week of the season, as usual, features DePauw at Wabash in the Monon Bell Game on Nov. 12 as the Tigers try to break a seven-game losing streak.

Wittenberg is finished playing the other teams in the top four.

Should be some great football down the stretch.

• It’s been tough times recently with the deaths of several notable athletic personalities who were all well-known in West Central Indiana.

Former Sullivan running standout Chad Smith passed away a few weeks ago after losing a battle to ALS.

More recently, long-time official and coach Don Corey of Terre Haute passed away after a brief illness.

Just Monday, former Monrovia and Terre Haute North football coach Wayne Stahley lost a battle with cancer. He is the winningest coach in North history.

• North Putnam soccer players Nikita Miller and Kaelynn Abner were recently given honorable mention academic all-state honors by the Indiana Coaches of Girls Sports Association.

• With just four fall sports still playing, a coach asked me recently if I was going to be able to take some time off work soon and what the “break” was between seasons.

Considering the girls’ basketball games begin on Nov. 1 and the football sectional championships are on Nov. 4, I guess the “break” would be negative three days.

Local girls’ basketball coaches had a great perspective on the inconveniences of the much earlier start of practice this year in Monday’s column.

One other negative factor I neglected to mention is the likely future occurrence of players choosing to not play basketball so they can go on a week-long fall break vacation with friends or family.

Spring sports coaches can merely tell them to “join the club” if that happens, since they already deal with this nuisance.

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