High School Hall of Fame a worthwhile stop

Basketball is on top of the sports news now in this area, and with the first week of regular season play now behind us, seems like we slipped right into the routine without missing a step.

Last weekend I traveled with the team to the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame Tip-Off Classic in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and it was a well-spent Saturday for sure.

In addition to the game against North Hardin, part of the day included a stop at the Hall of Fame in downtown E-town.

I’ve been wanting to tour the facility since it was opened a few years back, the brainchild of the Kentucky Association of Basketball Coaches.

Opening in 2012 in a former church building on Dixie Avenue, the facility is a well thoughtout look at the game of basketball as it is played on the high school level in Kentucky.

Both vintage and modern memorabilia, displays, names, photos, equipment and information is stacked throughout the facility and we had as a group a considerable amount of time to walk through and view the displays,

On a schedule to get to the Central Hardin High School for the game that evening, both assistant Coach Mike Beard and I agreed later – going back to the Hall of Fame would see both of us spending a couple of hours inside doing everything that was on hand to read, touch and interact with.

One aspect of the tour that I was most impressed with wasn’t really a part of the HOF display, but rather a part of the Clinton County team attitude.

The boys in our blue uniform weren’t in a rush at all to get through the display, despite the fact that much of the items and information on hand pre-dates their birth dates by years and even decades.

They read the tags, they watched the short films, they pointed towards the old basketballs on display and the old barn wood backboards overhead.

Well behaved, mature acting, eager to take in the experience and respectful of the facility, I was certainly proud to be touring the HOF side by side and shoulder to shoulder with this fine acting group of young Clinton County Bulldogs.

While the Kentucky High School Basketball Wall of Fame might not necessarily be a destination for a special trip considering the four-hour round trip distance from Albany, it is certainly worth a two-hour stopover if your are ever finding yourself en-route to the Louisville area with a couple of extra hours to spend.

In the meantime-I’m in the gym until March.