Columbus native Jerry Newsom, left, goes up for a shot against Butler during his playing days at Indiana State.
Photo courtesy of ISU Athletics
When Jerry Newsom graduated from Indiana State in 1968, he held the school’s all-time basketball scoring record.
A decade later, a guy by the name of Larry Bird came along and broke Newsom’s record. Newsom, with 2,147 points in only three seasons with the Sycamores, still ranks second.
In February at the Hulman Center, Newsom will reap a little more of a reward for his career in Terre Haute. The Columbus native will have his number 41 retired at an ISUs game to be determined.
“Columbus when I grew up there was just awesome, and Indiana State was great,” Newsom said from his winter home in St. Pete Beach, Florida. “We won the conference every year, went to the NCAA Tournament every year, sellout crowds every year. It was just the best. I wish we’d won a few more games, but everybody wants to do that.”
Newsom was an All-American at ISU and MVP of the 1968 NCAA College Division Tournament, when the Sycamores fell to Kentucky Wesleyan in the title game. He was chosen to participate in the 1968 Olympic Trials and was drafted by the NBA’s Boston Celtics, the ABA’s Indiana Pacers and European club Barcelona.
But Newsom also had a high draft pick to go to Vietnam, so he signed up for the Air Force Reserves. He signed with the Pacers when Larry Staverman was coaching, but when he got out of the Reserves, he didn’t have the same connection with their new coach, Bob “Slick” Leonard.
“The Pacers were tough,” Newsom said. “They had (Bob) Netolicky, Roger Brown, Freddie Lewis, Mel Daniels. They had some good players. They were good, and I wasn’t in very good shape. It’s hard to play basketball with combat boots on. Timing is a big deal. I just had bad timing with certain things.”
So Newsom returned to Columbus. He coached at Franklin College for a year and taught at Franklin High School. In 1974, he took over his father’s business, Newsom Industries, and remains its president to this day.
During that time, Newsom refereed high school and college basketball games with another Columbus native, Steve Welmer, for about 30 years until Welmer started doing more regional and national games.
“Steve was the best,” Newsom said. “When they went to three referees, he had a chance to go to the big time, and that was great.”
In the meantime, Newsom played with a group of some other former Columbus basketball stars in events like the White River Games.
“I was around some great people,” Newsom said. “Steve Welmer, David Welmer, Ted Rutan, Jody Littrell, some of the great players in Columbus. Those guys were great. We had really good players and teams, and several teams went into the finals. We weren’t spring chickens, and we gave those college guys all they wanted.”
Newsom was the star of the 1964 Columbus High School team that reached the state’s Final Four. He was an Indiana All-Star that year.
“I grew up in a good era in Columbus,” Newsom said. “We had a great team, sellout crowds. I was around great people there in Columbus. It’s fun to be around great people doing great things. It’s hard to find that now with so much stuff going on.”
Now 75, Newsom has split his time between Columbus and Florida the past several years. He said he hasn’t attended a high school game since 1997, the year Indiana went to class sports.
“I’m just a basketball junkie,” Newsom said. “I liked basketball until they changed it with AAU and class sports. I just don’t follow it the way I used to because of class sports and AAU. It’s just different today. I try to stay out of it because my time is over. I still like the kids, but I just let the new people do their stuff.”
Newsom, who was inducted into the ISU Hall of Fame in 1984, credited his Columbus head coach Bill Stearman and assistant Dave Horn and his ISU coaches Duane Klueh, Don McDonald and Gordon Stauffer with his development on and off the court.
“I started late,” Newsom said. “I was a 15-year-sophomore, and coach Don McDonald showed me a lot about basketball. I started at the end of the bench, but I learned a lot because of his coaching, and Bill Stearman was a fantastic coach. It was a fantastic era for basketball.
“Duane Klueh was just a great coach,” he added. “I went (to ISU) with two of my friends, Butch Wade and Steve Hollenbeck, so it was a wave from Columbus going over to Indiana State. My senior year, I played for Gordon Stauffer. It was great coaching and great teammates and big crowds. It was fun. It was kind of in that era where there was a lot of good times. Coaching was great, and sellout crowds were great and teammates were great. I’m really happy with all the things that went on.”
