Willard connections to "Hoosiers' run deep

The memories came flooding back. Now retired and living in Beavercreek near Dayton, Kevin Predieri didn't anticipate hearing news about his hometown basketball team that connected to him. The 1975 Willard High School graduate received word from one of his friends, Dave Sullivan, a 1970 WHS graduate and former WLKR announcer, about the Crimson Flashes playing a game in Knightstown, Ind. "I was quite shocked in a positive way," Predieri said. "That's pretty exciting to know these teams can play there, and then for Willard to win in the manner they did was pretty fantastic to hear." On Dec. 27, the Crimson Flashes and nearby Monroeville made the 3.5-hour trip to the small Indiana town to play a game inside the "Hoosiers" Gymnasium. The gym served as the home venue for fictional Hickory High School in the 1986 smash-hit movie "Hoosiers." It just so happened that Predieri and his late classmate Mark Wieringa worked on the movie set behind the scenes. Wieringa died at age 67 last year (Jan. 10, 2025). "I was a carpenter under Mark, who was the construction coordinator," Predieri said. "His sister, Jan, was a producer on some films in Hollywood, and she hooked up Mark with some people who had done a film, then they moved on to Hoosiers. "He was the head of the construction crew, and I worked under him as a carpenter." Essentially, Predieri's job was to help build and take down set pieces from three main locations. The movie was filmed in gymnasiums in Knightstown, Columbus, Ind., and for the climatic state final, at Hinkle Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis. "You build the sets, and in particular in that gym, when the kid (Buddy) is shoved into a glass trophy case, we made that set," Predieri said. "We changed the scoreboards out, re-did the floors so I would look like the correct time period the movie was set in, just a lot of things like that." Depending on which gym Predieri and the crew worked, there was frequent changing out of signs and modeling the floors to look the correct way. "If it was a gym being used, we'd take it down and put our signs up for Hickory," he said. "That's about what we did in that main gym, since it obviously wasn't a large portion of the movie." Predieri said the carpenters had the option to watch dailies, which was the unedited footage shot each day from the film. "They were uncut, and they'd run them over and over, so they weren't all that exciting," he said. "But we were allowed to watch them. But for the most part, we saw the finished product just like moviegoers did." Willard dramatics It felt like a scene out of the movie. During the game against Monroeville, the Crimson Flashes trailed 59-57 with six seconds left. Willard then ran a full-court play and got senior Mason Dawson the basketball in the right corner. He drilled a 3-pointer with four seconds left for the 60-59 victory. In the movie, star Jimmy Chitwood takes the dramatic game-winning shot to give the fictional Hickory Huskers the Indiana state championship with two seconds left at Hinkle Fieldhouse. "We watched the movie about a week before we played there as a team," Dawson said. "It was great to be able to do that in that gym with the fans right on top of us. It was special." Dawson said he couldn't see if his shot was on target when he let go because he had a Monroeville defender closely guarding him. "It felt pretty good, but I couldn't really see it until the ball went through the net," he said. "But I had confidence when I let go." Willard head coach Joe Bedingfield informed his players of Willard's further connection to the movie thanks to the carpentry of Predieri and Wieringa. "It was cool to know there was that background behind the scenes to further connect our town to the movie," Dawson said. "The ending like that, it was fitting. Honestly, we were hoping for a close game instead of a blowout for either side, and that game was far from it. "I think it was a bit of a disadvantage to us to play the actual game in a smaller gym against a much bigger team, but it was for sure fun to play there." Bedingfield felt a deeper connection to the experience once he learned of Predieri and Wieringa. "Sometimes you feel like coming from a small town, you hear about people going out and doing things, but you don't always get to see it," he said. "We've had a lot of people who have done a lot of great things for Willard. But I think our kids were able to understand that when we told them about it. "It's cool that we got to play there, but also to know that someone from our little town was able to work on a major movie like this in the 1980s … it's neat and reconnects things to show you can do big things beyond your small town." Bedingfield wanted his players to know that their background from Willard is a foundation to do big things. "As coaches and teachers, we're laying the foundation for when they go beyond high school, where they can chase their dreams," he said. "I never met Kevin or Mark, but to go work on the movie sets they did, they probably took some things from high school that they learned with the teachers and were able to apply that in their adult lives. "I'm sure they enjoyed doing it, and it was great we got to experience this for our kids." Looking back Prior to movies, Predieri and Wieringa worked together as a small company in Wooster, where they remodeled some older homes. Janet had already been out in Hollywood and connected to various people, which led to Mark being hired by the set designer and art director for Hoosiers. "They hired him as the lead carpenter, then he hired me because we had worked together and he knew what I could do," Predieri said. Predieri later worked on movies such as "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" in 1989 with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, as well as Internal Affairs (1990), which starred Richard Gere and Andy Garcia. Wieringa continued on to work on another dozen or so movies, while Predieri went to school and later became a teacher and a counselor before retiring. But it's hard not to associate his memories with Hoosiers. The film was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Actors Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper were the main stars, along with actress Barbara Hershey. The movie had a budget of $6 million but grossed more than $28 million. It still is considered as the best or one of the best sports movies ever made. And Predieri had a role in it. "It was pretty ironic because it was a non-union film, which is why we were allowed to work on it," he said. "And it wasn't a tremendously large budget for a movie, though they did have some big names with Gene, Barbara, and Dennis. "I was occasionally on the set as a carpenter if they needed something done. I'd sit there and watch, but normally I was on the crew that built things ahead of the filming. It was a fun and memorable experience, and just neat to see Willard got to play there."