(This article, reprinted with permission, featuring our 1983 state basketball champions, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on March 18, 2003)

Just like yesterday
20 years ago, Bexley’s Lions were considered merely a speed bump for powerful Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary on its way to a state title. What happened next lives on in the mind of every Lion today.

Bill Rabinowitz
The Columbus Dispatch

They hear the name Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary and the memories come flooding back.

Can it really be 20 years?

Can it really be two full decades since the Bexley Lions stunned SV-SM in the 1983 state semifinals and then won the first and only state basketball championship in school history?

Seems like yesterday to those Bexley players these days, especially with all the hype surrounding SV-SM’s LeBron James.

"When somebody asks about our team or if I tell somebody about our team and I mention Akron (SV-SM), anybody who watches television in any state knows exactly who they are," said David Elliott, the starting center on the ‘83 Bexley team. “Yeah, it sparks quite a bit of memories.”

James may be a once-in-a-lifetime player, but the task facing Bexley then was every bit as formidable as what Irish opponents will face this week.

The ‘83 SV-SM team had one future NBA player (Jerome Lane), a future NFL player (Frank Stams) and two future Ohio State players (Curtis Wilson in basketball and Ed Taggart in football).

Junior forward Steve Calhoun, who played at Ole Miss, was the only Bexley player who would compete in Division I basketball.

This was pre-lnternet, however, and information about opponents was scarce.

"From what I remember, we didn’t know that much about them, which was probably a good thing,” point guard Rich Gatterdam said. “Probably the more we knew, the more nervous we would have been.”

They found out soon enough how dominating SV-SM could be; the Irish took an early 15-point lead. But Bexley was, above all else, a team. Through star guard Steve Williard had an off night shooting, Bexley fought back and won 65-58. The Lions then rolled over Oak Harbor 77-58 in the championship game, their 27th straight victory after losing in the season opener.

“I think sometimes when you’ve worked with kids long enough, you just have a feeling, and I had a feeling from very beginning that this was a special group and they had an opportunity to go a long way in the tournament,” said Gene Millard, who coached the Bexley boys from 1961 to 1997. “They just had the cohesiveness. They genuinely liked each other.”

What may be as remarkable as their state title run is the fact that many of the players remain as close now as they were then. Most still live in or around Bexley. Several play on the same softball team. They’ve been in each other’s weddings and, unfortunately, gone to the funerals of teammates Chris Cory and David Hunt. (The players had a golf fund-raiser to help defray some of Hunt’s medical costs.)

“I realize how unique it is,” Gatterdam said, “when I talk to people and say, ‘This good friend of mine from high school . . . ‘ and they say, ‘I don’t see anybody from my high school anymore.’ It’s kind of special.”

The Bexley team had a formal reunion a month ago at a local restaurant and then the next night at Millard’s condominium complex. All but two out-of-town players came, and only extenuating circumstances kept them away. Even the team manager, Randy Katz, flew in from Las Vegas.

“It’s like it was yesterday,” Elliott said. “Everybody got together and it was like 20 years hadn’t gone by.”

They watched the film of their semifinal and championship games, as much for laughs as to relive the glory.

“In the team picture, we really look like the Bad News Bears,” said David Brown, a junior on the championship team. “The jerseys were hemmed at the bottom, so you kept them untucked. They were so ugly. We had three or four different size numbers. Our starting lineup didn’t even have same size numbers. You think, ‘Who are these guys?’ I think that was somewhat symbolic of our team.”

The Bexley players have become successful in their professional careers. They are financial planners, sales managers, chemists, bankers, golf pros, teachers, coaches.

They are approaching middle age, but part of them will remain Bexley Lions, 1983 state champions, forever.

"My older brother is an attorney in town,” Elliott said. “I followed him to Denison. We’re very competitive with one another and he never won anything because he played on average teams. He hears this stuff over and over and he says, ‘Enough is enough. Can we please move on? You’re 15 years into your (work) career.' "

Gatterdam hears the same thing sometimes.

“Maybe we should, but I guess that part of us will never grow up,” he said. This week, they’ll be kids in their hearts even more.

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