HILLARY SMITH: Can local teams buck class trend?

Bowman Academy girls basketball coach Janora Holmes spent Sunday's girls basketball IHSAA sectional draw in Indianapolis, on the air at the Fox 59 TV station where it was shown live on television.

She took freshman Joshlyn King with her, as the pair represented the Eagles for their first hoops draw as a Class 2A school.

Defending a sectional title is hard enough to start with, but as the IHSAA has realigned the sectionals five times since the start of class basketball in 1997, inevitably, one sectional title holder will land in a bracket with another. In this case, Bowman and Wheeler would only meet in the championship game.

Bowman isn't the only team jumping a class this season. The Eagles are joined by Hanover Central, which won five sectional titles and a regional crown as a 2A team now making the leap to 3A, and Whiting, which slides into the powerful 2A sectional that also holds Bowman and Wheeler.

"It's a big jump going up to 2A, but in terms of our sectional, it's not that big a change because we're bringing Bowman with us, they were in our Class A sectional, too," Whiting coach Kevin Moynihan said. "We know it's going to be hard, but it's always been hard to get past them."

History is no friend to the moving teams.

Take Highland for example: The Trojans won a sectional title in Class 4A in the second year of class hoops and followed it with another one in 2001. By 2003, population at the school dropped Highland to a Class 3A team, where it swept as sectional champs both years in the lower class. After another move up in 2004, it took the Trojans until 2007 to hoist another crown.

Flora Carroll made the move from Class A (where it won a 1998 sectional title) to 2A in 2000. It wasn't until 2008, when the Cougars started a run of three consecutive sectional championships, that they found success in 2A.

Holmes said Bowman has been preparing for this move all of its young basketball life. The Eagles have only been in the tournament since 2009, but have historically played above their own class.

"When our schedules are put together by (boys basketball) Coach Marvin Rea, he's not just putting them together according to class, but to find us some competition that even the higher classes offer," Homes said. "It's not just local, but what we see at the higher levels offers us a different style of play."

The Eagles are 3-0 this season against sectional opponents, 4-0 against other 2A teams, and 15-6 overall. Whiting is 7-3 against sectional opponents, 8-3 against the class and is 15-5 overall. Hanover Central plays in the Porter County Conference with five Class A teams. The Wildcats are 3-2 against their Class 3A counterparts, 2-1 against the sectional and 11-6 overall.

"We're excited about the opportunities as we move up in class," Hanover Central coach Doug Nelson said. "We don't have any control over what they do with us, so we didn't hesitate to add Class 4A teams like E.C. Central. We added more teams and bigger teams in our holiday tournament, all of it preparing for us to move up in class."

This column solely represents the writer's opinion. Reach her at hillary.smith@nwi.com.