Congratulations to the Roy Gardner Award Winners: Bob Anderson and Ray Tebbe
Bob Anderson
Bob Anderson recently completed his 33rd season as an Indiana high school basketball official. During his career, he has worked 30 IHSAA boys basketball tournaments, including five boys State Finals, and he was named the IHSAA/National Federation Officials Association boys basketball Official of the Year in 2006-07.
A 1971 graduate of Purdue University, Anderson started coaching out of college but shifted into officiating because of officials who influenced him when they called his games. He started officiating basketball in 1979 and worked his first IHSAA tournament in 1983. Over the years, he also has worked three girls basketball State Finals and five football State Finals.
Anderson has served as president of the Indiana Officials Association in 1990-91 as well as other positions with that organization.
He recalls a 1999 boys basketball regional game as his most memorable, a contest that pitted Class 4A No. 1 Bloomington South vs. No. 2 Lawrence North and drew a capacity crowd to the Columbus North gym but stands out for reasons beyond South’s 55-50 overtime victory. This is the game in which then-LN senior John Stewart collapsed in the latter part of the third quarter and later that evening passed away.
Anderson is a 1966 graduate of Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Md. He then attended Purdue and later received his master’s degree from Indiana University in 1975. From 1973-2009, he was a teacher for Indianapolis Public Schools at School #68.
Anderson is married to Susan, and he has three sons and two step-daughters.
Ray Tebbe
Ray Tebbe comes full circle in receiving the Roy Gardner Award because Gardner was Tebbe’s geometry teacher while Tebbe attended Batesville High School.
Tebbe recently completed his 31st season as an Indiana high school basketball official, and he has worked IHSAA basketball tournaments for 30 of those years. Along the way, he has worked six boys basketball State Finals, three girls basketball State Finals, three football State Finals, five City Securities Hall of Fame Classics (three boys, two girls) and the 1999 Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl (the NCAA Division III football championship game).
Tebbe served as president of the Indiana Officials Association in 1991-92 and was named IHSAA/National Federation Officials Association boys basketball Official of the Year in 1996-97.
A 1970 graduate of Batesville and a 1974 graduate of Ball State with a bachelor’s degree in secondary education, Tebbe was a teacher and coach for five years at Shelbyville Middle School. He took a job with Carrier Corp. in 1980, where he still works in the supply chain management group as the sales and operations planning manager.
Tebbe began officiating in 1981 as a way to stay involved with high school athletics, and he recalls two particularly memorable games. One was his first varsity boys basketball game in 1984 at the Elkhart North Side Gym, a game between Elkhart Central and Concord (the Minutemen had a freshman that season named Shawn Kemp). The other was a boys basketball regional game in 1990 at Seymour, the game in which then-Bedford North Lawrence senior Damon Bailey broke the state career scoring record in a 78-58 victory over Scottsburg.
“I called a foul on Damon in the first quarter and all 7,000 fans ‘booed’ me,” Tebbe said. “Even the (Scottsburg) fans. Everyone came to see Damon break the scoring record. When he made the basket to do so (an alley-oop dunk with 5:53 to go in the third quarter), the noise level was so loud for the next three-plus minutes (for a standing ovation for Bailey) that my ears were ringing. Truly unbelievable.”
Tebbe and his wife, Denise, have been married for 35 years. They have two adult daughters, Karen and Sara.
