(La Porte, IN) - The ESPN televised basketball invitational in La Porte next month is going to have sort of a Hollywood kick off.

 

The school bus from the 1986 basketball movie “Hoosiers” is going to be at the historic Civic Auditorium where some of the best young basketball talent in the nation will compete over a three day period.

 

In the movie, the 1939 Chevy bus carried the “Huskers” players from downstate Hickory High School to their basketball games during their small school state championship season.

 

Jack Arnett, Executive Director of the La Porte County Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the bus will be parked outside the Civic Auditorium for people to go inside prior to the start of the first game of the La Porte Invitational on January 9.

 

“It’s the real bus,” he said.

 

Arnett said there will also be a speaker on the bus sharing some of its nostalgia.

 

Hoosiers is based on the team from small Milan High School winning the Indiana High School basketball championship at a time when all schools, no matter how big or small, competed together in a single tournament.

 

The bus was actually used as a school bus from 1939 to 1949 in the Indianapolis and Lebanon school districts.

 

Arnett said the bus should fit perfectly with the very much old school Hoosiers-like atmosphere of the Civic Auditorium, which opened nearly a century ago.