40 years ago, Castle showed the rest of the state that Southern Indiana could play football
NEWBURGH, Ind. — The “River Rats” and “Highway Trash” combined forces to become a powerhouse that rocked the rest of Indiana’s football foundation in the early 1980s.
Once considered a shotgun marriage, the merger of Newburgh and Chandler students created a juggernaut. The addition of Alcoa helped transform Newburgh from a sleepy river town into a bustling suburb. Castle High School, which became the first local program to win the large-school state championship in 1982, will host a 40-year reunion before the Knights’ home game against Bosse on Friday.
Gene Whorl will broadcast a two-hour program on WREF from 4 to 6 p.m. about the reunion.
Driving into Newburgh in the early 1970s, fellow attorney and West Sider David Jones told Neil Chapman that he saw signs saying: "'Move to Newburgh and be somebody.' He thought it was put up by the town of Newburgh. Anyway, he said that he took it as a really snotty thing," Chapman said.
"There’s an aspirational thing about Castle. With social media today there's a much different dynamic."
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It's easy to see why West Siders still refer to Newburghians as "cake eaters," even though many of the wealthiest locals currently live on the far North Side.
Castle, regarded with disdain by teams from central and northern Indiana, slayed Carmel in the semistate, and then Hobart, in the 1982 Class 3A (then the largest class) state championship game. Joe Huff, an all-state junior linebacker on the '82 title team, said Castle football was the talk and pride of the community.
"I really think the Evansville schools were going backward in enrollments while Castle was growing," said Huff, who starred at Indiana University. "Castle’s community took great pride in showing their spirit from the signs put up on business to the cheering at games. It was like there was a sign every 100 yards."
Chapman compared Castle's yearly celebrations to Evansville native Bob Griese and his Miami Dolphins teammates remaining from their undefeated Super Bowl VII title team toasting each other with champagne each year. While the Dolphins finished 17-0 in the 1972 season, Castle was 14-0 at the prep level 10 years later. But there is a tinge of sadness as the years march on.
"When you got older, you attended a lot of weddings. Now you start attending a lot of funerals," said Thom Wilder, author of "The Road to Paradise," the story of Castle's run to the '82 state championship.
Deon Chester, a junior wide receiver on the '82 team, didn't know what it was like to lose.
"After our first loss at Ball State, I was crying," said Chester, one of two Cardinals who made the trip to the University of Massachusetts. "A teammate said, 'Man, what's wrong?' I said, 'I don't lose.' We never thought we would lose at Castle. It wasn't talked about.
"That was a big part of my upbringing. It carried that on throughout the rest of my life. I attribute that to the coaching staff and the players around me."
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Chester ended as Ball State's career receiving leader with 146 catches for 2,256 yards, from 1984-88. His records were finally broken in 2004 by Dante Ridgeway.
Huff said what made the '82 team special is it truly believed it would win the state title.
"You had a group of guys that were competitive and wanted to win – we had our jaws locked and we could hit! We knew we were much more talented and athletic than the team a year before that made it to the final four against Carmel," he said. "We had a great work ethic and a strong weight training program in the offseason combined with great coaches."
Mark Anderson, a Castle assistant under Indiana Football Hall of Famer and University of Evansville Athletics Hall of Famer John Lidy, brought a lot of his knowledge from his time at IU, Huff said.
"His coaching and leadership set the belief in everyone who played for him – a great motivator," Huff said.
Chester said the Castle players took a collective look at themselves in the mirror and stayed accountable.
"We were all in it together," he said. "The community was behind us, the community encouraged us. There never was anyone who was late to a meeting. You would walk into the grocery store and people would know who you are. Everyone would encourage you."
Chester, who won the John Magnabosco Award as Ball State's team MVP in '87, served as a collegiate assistant coach at Ball State from 1989-93. He also made stops at IU, Temple and Western Michigan.
Huff is honored to be the recipient of the 2022 Z.G. Clevenger Award, along with former IU basketball great Randy Wittman on Sept. 16. Huff, who developed from an undersized walk-on in 1983 to one of the Hoosiers' most dominant defensive presences from 1985-88, was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 2003.
Alcoa spurs growth
Once considered one of the busiest river ports between Cincinnati and New Orleans, Newburgh faded into relative obscurity after the mid-1800s. It became just another stagnant little river town thanks to railroad expansion in northern Indiana. By the 1950s, the lack of economic opportunity froze Newburgh in time. The Newburgh High School Wildcats and Chandler Panthers – merely 8.5 miles apart – were bitter rivals. Chandler residents referred to Newburghians as “River Rats” while Newburghians referred to Chandlerites as “Highway Trash.”
Despite its reputation as a blue-collar river town, Newburgh began its 30-year transition into a sprawling suburb thanks to the addition of Alcoa, which built a 150,000-ton-a-year smelter and 375,000-kilowatt power plant on the Ohio River just east of Newburgh to an unincorporated area near Yankeetown in 1960. Approximately 1,200 permanent and 2,000 construction-related jobs were coming to southern Warrick County. Along with those jobs came a tax base and the flood of new students always accompanying new-found economic prosperity. (The Warrick County plant shut its smelter down in 2016; it was partially restarted in '17.)
The new 78,266-square-foot high school, named after local farmer and landowner John H. Castle, was founded in 1959.
"It was a shotgun marriage," Wilder said. "They (Newburgh and Chandler students) were forced together. It was the era of consolidation. They were only 8.5 miles apart, but the kids didn't socialize because a lot of them didn't have cars in the 1950s. They held sock hops and kids stood on the opposite sides of the gym."
That perception slowly began to change as the years went on, but there was still a difference. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wilder noted that Chandler kids probably shopped at Sears, while the cars Newburgh kids drove were a cut above.
"Even though there was a competitive divide between Newburgh and Chandler, it wasn’t an issue for our team," said Chandler native Pat Lockyear, center and linebacker on the '82 team who has coached Castle's softball team in recent decades. "We played against each other in youth football. But when we came together in seventh grade, we quickly became one team."
Even though Chandler appears to be the "little brother" in the story, Chapman pointed out that technically Chandler (3,855 population) is a slightly larger town than Newburgh (3,263). That's because Newburgh's city limits don't stray far from the Ohio River; the rest of what many people might think is still Newburgh is technically Ohio Township, which contains 63 percent (40,309) of Warrick County's population.
Living off Bell Road, Chapman found himself sort of between the Newburghians and Chandlerites.
"I spent a lot of time with the Brosmer brothers (Chris and Dave, who both played for UE)," said Chapman, fullback on the '82 team. "We were a tight group."
While Newburgh has a suburban feel, Lockyear said perhaps Alcoa's influence in the town's development is overstated a bit.
"Maybe not everyone who moved to Newburgh worked at Alcoa," said Lockyear, whose late father, Hal, did work at Alcoa.
"He was working there when I was born in 1965," Lockyear said. "The Castle district exploded in the 1970s. South Broadview was the big subdivision. The increased numbers certainly helped our sports teams."
Clash of cultures
You couldn't have found more different backgrounds than Hobart and Castle, which met in the '82 state championship game. Hobart was from a blue-collar northern Indiana suburb of Chicago, while Kentucky beckons across the Ohio from downtown Newburgh. Castle prevailed 26-23 in the title game, forever etching itself in local football lore.
"Most of our players had not heard of Hobart," Lockyear said. "There was a distinctive difference in our geography. Their area (the Calumet region) had a reputation for being very tough. Hobart had (still has) fewer students than Castle. They were an established program when we played them."
Chapman noted that central and northern Indiana programs did not give credence to Reitz’s mythical state championships because they were based on polls before the postseason playoff format was introduced in 1973, not on the field.
"I didn’t know what the rest of the state thought about us," Huff said. "I just thought we were by far the best team in the state and that Martinsville and Hobart were not some super powerful program. Now, Carmel was arrogant and cocky - they still are. Why in the heck do you want to have about 6,000 kids (actually 5,414) at your school?"
Castle definitely had a chip on its shoulder playing teams from central and northern Indiana, said Chester, who has relatives in Carmel and enjoys reminiscing.
"When I drive into town, a big smile comes over me still today," Chester said.
John Lidy makes it happen: 'A whole different class of competition'
Starstruck by the gleaming new school, Newburgh and Chandler kids tried to put their animosity toward each other on the back burner. Fielding its first varsity football team in 1960, Castle slowly built itself into a powerhouse. John Lidy, a 27-year-old former Army officer and UE football player, was handed the head coaching reins following the 1972 season.
A decade later, Lidy has transformed the Knights into a state powerhouse. But as the school grew, the program had to make the jump from 2A to 3A and suffered immense growing pains, including a 19-game losing streak.
"Essentially it was like starting over," Wilder said. "From Boonville and Tell City to playing Reitz, Mater Dei and Central, it was a whole different class of competition."
Castle avenged its 49-13 loss to eventual state champion Carmel in the 1981 semistate with a 21-8 victory over the Greyhounds in another semistate a year later. But Chapman pointed out that the Knights weren't the same team. They were vastly improved.
"Remember that the starting lineup would have been much different," Chapman said.Lidy died of a heart attack on Sept. 9, 2016, at age 71.
"He had unimpeachable and uncanny dedication to coaching," Chapman said. "He lived it. That was coach Lidy. He was quiet. It was all about the kids. He was selfless and really knew how to assemble a team."
Chapman said Lidy was not afraid to delegate responsibilities to his assistants and welcomed their input.
"He let others shine," Chapman said. "There was no narcissism. It wasn’t about him. It was about something bigger."
Lidy, who also guided Castle to the Class 5A state championship in 1994, ended with a 209-112 record. He was enshrined into the Indiana HOF in 2000. But even at the induction ceremony, Lidy was unafraid to humble himself. During his speech, he asked, "How many people have had an undefeated season?"
Hands were raised.
Lidy then asked, "How many have had a season without winning any games? No one raised his hand," Chapman said.
Except for Lidy, who quietly hung in there as Castle made the transition to a higher class. It wasn't an accident that Castle scaled the heights in '82. It was a team without weaknesses, according to Lockyear.
Entering the reunion, Chester said he hasn't seen a lot of his old teammates in years.
"There will be big handshakes and big smiles and a lot of good feelings," he said.
Contact Gordon Engelhardt at gordon.engelhardt@courierpress.com or on Twitter @EngGordon
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Indiana high school football: 1982 state championship team has reunion
