The TCU Tiger Den at Warsaw Community High School will host professional basketball this weekend as The Basketball League will play an exhibition game Friday night. On hand in late January to announce the games, which will also see the Manahan Orthopaedic Captial Center on the campus of Grace College host a game Thursday, were, from left to right, Scott Wiley, Kosciusko County Chamber Member Relations Manager; David Magley, TBL President; Preston Myers, Team President of the Lebanon Leprechauns; Kent Benson, Team Owner of the Indiana All-Americans; Matt Binkerd, Warsaw Community High School Athletic Director; Rob Parker, Kosciusko County Chamber President and CEO; and Heather Lardino, Ambassador, First Source Bank. Photo by Mike Deak.

By Mike Deak
Staff Writer

WARSAW  – The TCU Tiger Den at Warsaw Community High School will be one of two sites for a pair of exhibition games from The Basketball League.

The professional league, which is part of the chain of leagues that feed the NBA, will have two games played on two days. The first is Thursday, Feb. 24, at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center on the campus of Grace College, and the second on Friday, Feb. 25, at the Tiger Den at WCHS.

The TBL, which league president David Magley notes is like a baseball ‘AA’ level equivalent for professional basketball, will bring in the Lebanon Leprechauns from Lebanon, Ind., to play the Canadian team Kitchener-Waterloo Titans at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 per person for each contest.

Grace will have the Indiana All-Americans and the Sudbury Five (Canada) playing each other at 7 p.m. as well.
The league features four teams from Indiana (Lebanon, Medora, Kokomo and New Castle), to which the league has been in existence for five years and houses over 40 total teams.

“The facilities that are here at Warsaw High School are just beautiful, and Grace College as well,” said Kent Benson, team owner of the Indiana All-Americans. “This community is just so rich with basketball, not just at the high school level, but at the college level as well. You can support venues like that, it’s a shame that there isn’t professional basketball here to extend the basketball tradition that’s here in Warsaw and Winona Lake.”

Magley expects the Warsaw exhibition to be very student-oriented, including bands, cheerleading and live streaming in conjunction with the game, as well as some hands-on opportunities in the works and potential fundraising opportunities.

“We think we can do it right and we can put on a good show,” Magley said, who with Benson, were both on campus at WCHS in mid-January. “After we play Thursday night, we could take a third to a half of our guys along with Kent and myself, and run chapel at Grace College and it would be as good as anything they’ve seen. That’s because that’s the kind of character that our kids come from. There’s a lot of high-end guys. It’s important to us. If we do the right things in the community, then we are impacting the youth, so we have the right kind of guys.”

Magley made it known that the exhibitions are a trial run as a potential test run to see if the TBL could house a team in Warsaw/Winona Lake, and is also looking at other potential sites around northern Indiana including Elkhart, which was the home to the Elkhart Express professional basketball for a number of years.

The exhibition games are backed by the Kosciusko County Chamber of Commerce.

“The people in the stands are going to see not only great basketball, but they are going to see good individuals as people, and that’s very important to us,” Benson said.

For more information on the event, visit the Kosciusko County Chamber of Commerce’s website (kchamber.com) or contact the Warsaw Community High School and/or Grace College athletic departments.