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The school grounds first, at 201 John Glenn Drive on the town's east side — the only sporting ground in America whose fame arrived in person: on 20 October 1968 the consolidated John Glenn High School was dedicated with astronaut John Glenn himself present, the school's namesake standing on the ground that has carried his name since — a fame of naming and presence that no season can add to or take away, and the ground has been a working school campus every year since, enrolling some 630 students in the federal record of 2024–25. The fame the ground has earned since is written on it in two layers. The Falcons' famous season stands on this soil: the 2004 football team, 10–4, sectional and regional champions — titles won on the school's field, which the board marked again in March 2025 by naming the football field for Richard Reese, the superintendent of 2014–2019, so the ground now carries a local name inside the famous one. The longer drought is also the ground's: the boys' basketball sectional title last stood here in 2005, on the record the Sports leg prints, and the program's recent firsts belong to the softball diamond — first sectional in 2025, first regional in 2026. (The school's state-title harvest, eighteen Spell Bowl championships on the school's count, is academic and was won at Purdue; it is the school's fame, printed in the Awards leg, and it is not claimed here as this ground's sporting soil.) The older arena is the second place: the school gym of the town-team era — the Lions' gym of the town's memory — where the Walkerton Lions, the town team, hosted the factory game's great night on 4 March 1948, losing 77–46 to Studebaker Local No. 5, the South Bend union's team, with Walkerton's Bellinger the home high scorer at 16, the schoolboy Walter LaFeber's story of the game carried in the town paper; the barnstorming House of David team was announced for the same floor on 26 March 1948. The sectional era made the gym the town's measuring place — LaFeber's 35 points in a 1951 sectional game is the night the record keeps — and the gym's line runs to the 2005 drought's start. Both grounds print as what they are: not stadiums, not shrines, but a named school campus and a school gym in a town of two thousand, famous at exactly the size their record carries. (Assembly note: this article is written from the banked schools, sources and awards record and from the audit register's summaries of the Sports leg, Sports not having been among the fragments supplied to this run; the Sports leg's own telling governs wherever the two differ.)
Sources: Schools section of this build (John Glenn High School, 201 John Glenn Drive; the dedication of October 20, 1968, with Glenn present, from Sheneman, Southern St. Joseph County, p. 60, and WSBT; the Reese field naming, board minutes of March 18, 2025; enrollment 2024–25). 5, March 4, 1948, 77–46, Bellinger 16; the House of David announcement for March 26, 1948; the school gym as the town's arena; LaFeber's 35 points, 1951; the last boys' sectional title, 2005; softball's first sectional 2025 and first regional 2026). Sources leg of this build (the March 4, 1948 game story in its Independent carriage). Awards leg (the Spell Bowl count — the school's, not the ground's).