Chicago (Carver) defeated Central in the IHSA Boys Basketball Championship game. (Photo courtesy IHSA)
By Eric Stock
BLOOMINGTON – Hundreds of hours of state finals basketball footage will soon by online at no cost for fans to see.
The Illinois High School Association is posting video from 145 boys' and girls' basketball championship games on its archives YouTube channel from 1947 to 2007 on Sunday.
Assistant Executive Director Scott Johnson said when the IHSA started posting state finals of its fall sports in August, it sparked a lot of interest and he asked why let those videos go to waste?
"We know that we'll really get a lot of interest with boys and girls basketball games," Johnson said. "Since those went out of over TV, people all across the state saw them," Johnson said.
Johnson said the video collection had been piling up and degrading over time. This will keep them preserved indefinitely.
"We just thought, gosh, it would be a terrible thing to lose that part of our legacy and if we are not trying to get them out to people, why are we even bothering trying to collect them and having them take up space on our shelves?," Johnson asked.
He added all of the video is professionally shot though they don't have television video until the late 1970s finals.
Johnson said if the videos are popular, more videos from other sports could be posted. Johnson said the IHSA has video from about 1,600 state finals.
The only state championship game missing from that time period is the Boys' Class AA championship in which Chicago (Phillips) defeated Chicago Heights (Bloom Twp.).
"If someone is out there and just happens to have a copy off the air or even a home movie type thing, we'd be interested in taking a look at it and maybe putting it up," Johnson said.
Eric Stock can be reached at eric.stock@cumulus.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
