Logansport referee Scott to be honored by Hall of Fame

Rick Scott is continuing an impressive run of referees with Logansport ties being recognized by the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

Scott is being honored as one of the 2025 Men’s Center Circle Officials Award winners next week.

He is part of a run that includes Dick “Mud” Modricker and John Lozier last year and Larry “Butch” Jones the year before who have earned the highest honor an Indiana high school basketball referee can achieve.

Scott is in his 45th season as an official, working since 1980 and still going strong.

Over the years, he has worked 32 sectionals, 26 regionals, seven semi-states, three State Finals (1998, 2002, 2005) and the 2000 Hall of Fame Classic in boys basketball. He also has worked 11 sectionals and eight regionals in girls basketball. In addition, he also has officiated football and has worked five State Finals in that sport.

Scott has been active in the North Central Officials Association, serving as president, vice president, a basketball rules interpreter and a basketball clinician over the years. He was named a winner of the Interscholastic Athletic Official Association Award from the IHSAA in 2003.

Scott, 73, is a 1970 graduate of Sycamore High School in Sycamore, Ill. There he was a multi-sport standout, starring in football, basketball and baseball. He was all-conference in all three sports as a junior and senior, special mention Illinois all-state in football and basketball as a senior, and team MVP in basketball (scoring 21.0 points per game) and baseball (hitting .400) as a senior.

He matriculated to Ball State, where he was a two-year regular at quarterback and punter and set BSU records for TD passes in a game (five vs. Richmond on Oct. 12, 1974) and single-game completion percentage (.917, 11-of-12 at Middle Tennessee State on Nov. 2, 1974). The single-game completion mark still is a school record.

Scott, who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ball State in 1975 and 1979, went on to teach elementary physical education in the Logansport Community School Corporation for 31 years. He retired from teaching in 2006. He has owned Red Hot Scott’s American Driving Academy since 2016, and the academy serves students in Cass, Howard and Miami counties.

A long-time member of Elks Lodge #66 in Logansport, Scott played competitive slow-pitch softball during his 20s and 30s and was inducted into the Indiana ASA Hall of Fame for slow-pitch softball in 2013.

Scott and his wife, Peggy, have two daughters – Abby Lundy and Natalie Baldini – and three grandchildren, Izzy Lundy, Graeme Lundy and Cash Baldini.

Scott moved to Logansport in 1975 back in the glory days of Indiana high school basketball and the North Central Conference.

“That’s one reason I came to Logansport. I came here in 1975. This was the best conference in the state by far,” he said. “Back then there was no big Indianapolis conference like there is now. All the teams in the North Central Conference was it. In basketball the state champs were coming out of here. In baseball the Berries had just won state. So this conference was just rolling.”

Scott started a coaching career soon after moving to Logansport. He actually served as the interim head basketball coach for the Berries for a time during the 1980-81 season.

“I was a head basketball coach at Logan for three games back in the Jim Williams days. That’s when Jim got sick. I was the JV coach,” he said. He got sick and had to quit and Hersh [Phil Hershberger] took over for I don’t know how many games it was. And he got upset at Williams. And then I took over for three games. We played, Harrison, Richmond and Huntington. And we beat Harrison. That was my one victory I ended with as the head basketball coach for three games. I was 1-2 beating Harrison who won the sectional that year. So that was my claim to fame.”

Scott began his officiating career in the early 1980s.

“The first gym I ever reffed in was Kokomo. I did a JV game that year,” he said. “I never did it like an elementary game or anything. I threw myself right out of the frying pan and into the fryer.

“My first boys sectional was at Gary West Side with John Lozier. That was 1985.”

Scott often officiated NCC games.

“When I started reffing, all the legendary North Central conference coaches were still working,” Scott said. “Bill Green was at Marion. New Castle had [Sam] Alford. Kokomo had Carl McNulty. There was Bill Harrell at Muncie Central, Norm Held at Anderson at the Wigwam, oh my goodness. That was my favorite place to ref was the Wigwam.

“New Castle, I remember going down there, that gym was unbelievable. I did a regional final overtime game with New Castle and Batesville [in 1997]. We had somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 there for just that championship game.”

Scott had to deal with some of the most legendary coaches in state history pleading for calls. He also has had to deal with sometimes overzealous fans.

“Fans, yeah you try to ignore them if you can,” he said. “But sometimes that’s really hard to do. I remember Bill Champion one time back in the day, he was a good ref, I believe he was up at Culver. He flipped off the crowd. He got caught doing it somehow. But there’s probably be a lot worse than that over the years. But I remember Bill did.

“As a young official you’re a little more feistier. You want to throw techs around or that stuff. And the older you get, you get a little more thicker skinned. You put up with a little bit more.”

Scott didn’t limit himself to NCC schools.

“I went anywhere,” he said. “I used to go up into the Region to East Chicago a lot of times. That was always a neat place to go. The only problem with it was the time change and you get home late at night. But I used to go to East Chicago, me and Scooter Mason. Big Scooter and me, we went up there and did a girls game between East Chicago and Lake Central. And those two teams were ranked 1 and 2 in Indiana and they were in the top five in the country. One of them was No. 1 in the country. And so me and Scooter went up and actually took Mud’s place and Butch’s place because they didn’t want to go up there for $50 on a weeknight or something. So me and Scooter said we’ll go. I took Scooter with me this game, and there was 8,200 in that gym. And it was an unbelievable game, one of my favorites of all time. And Scooter had to call a traveling call late in the game. That was the correct call. That decided that game. I’ll never forget it.

“That was something, so some big gyms. I’ve been to Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, New Castle, as far south as I ever went was Vincennes. I went all the way down to Vincennes on a weeknight with Jeff Shelhart. We went down there, got home at 3 in the morning or 4 in the morning that night. I’ll never forget that one.”

Scott still stays busy during the winter officiating a lot of games.

“I’ve slowed down a little bit from the boys, but I still ref, I probably did 35, 40 games this winter, two-thirds of them girls, the other third boys,” he said. “As the season starts in November, December, a lot of girls games. And then I work in boys games as I go, get my legs get in shape. I’m 73 years old now. I’ve been blessed. I’ve had three hips put in and I still can move OK, so I’m lucky.

“I’m going to keep going until something starts hurting again. My knees have been fine. I’m on my third artificial hip and I thought, God, what if my knees go? I had a little football injury in college. They took a little meniscus out of it back in 1974. And that was major surgery at that time. They used a chainsaw in 1974 to get me open.”

All Center Circle Officials Award winners will be honored at the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame’s 63rd Men’s Awards Banquet on Wednesday, March 19.

A midday reception, free and open to the public, will be held at the Hall of Fame Museum in New Castle. The evening banquet will take place at Primo Banquet Hall, which is located on the south side of Indianapolis.

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