Wingate won their second State Championship in a row in 1914. Homer Stonebraker and Jesse Graves were selected to the Indiana All-Student team.

Homer Stonebraker and the two-time State Champs, Wingate High School.

            Wingate High School watched Crawfordsville win the first IHSAA State Tournament in 1911, followed by Lebanon in 1912, and then dominated the basketball world in the state of Indiana for the next two years.  Wingate was led by 6’3” Homer Stonebraker who took his snow shovel and cleared the path to New Richmond, six miles away, so that he and his teammates could practice in a real gymnasium one day a week. The boys traveled by horse and buggy, in Model T’s, or simply went by foot in those two eventful two years.

            According to A.H. “Tuck” Williams writing in his book The Big Bang of Basketball, “…there was a grade school farm boy who put up a small ring on his woodshed in his barnyard near Wingate.  Homer Stonebraker’s hoop was about half the size of a regulation goal.  He used a rubber ball about the size of a tennis ball to practice shooting.  His relentless practice prepared him for a high school, college and professional basketball career that put him in the same class as the all-time basketball greats from Indiana.  During his junior year at Wingate, 1913, Stonebraker led Wingate to a 22-3 record that season when he had a single game in which he scored 80 points in a 108-8 thrashing of Hillsboro.  Wingate had an enrollment of about 60 pupils and their Indiana State Championship against much larger city schools created tremendous interest, enthusiasm, and participation in the sport throughout the Hoosier state.” 

The state finals that year was played at Indiana University in the Old Assembly Hall.  Wingate defeated South Bend in an overtime game 15-14 as Forest Crane hit the winning field goal before a packed house of 2500 fans.  Jess Wood was the coach of the Wingate team.  Wingate had to play five games in one day to win the championship.  The members of the championship team were Leland Olin, Forest Crane, Homer Stonebraker, Jesse Graves, John Blacker, McKinley Murdock, and Lee Sinclair.

            Wingate followed up its initial championship season with the first repeat championship in the now basketball-crazy state of Indiana.  Wingate’s enrollment had dropped to 48, but they still had Homer Stonebraker and four other returning players in Leland Olin, Lee Sinclair, Jesse Graves and John Blacker.  In order to win the tournament, Wingate had to play 2 games on Friday and a grueling 4 games on Saturday. Stonebraker scored the first 20 points for his team in the championship game as they defeated Anderson 36-8.