MATT, BRENDA AND I FINISHED READING THE BOOK AND WERE IMPRESSED AT THE LEVEL OF DETAIL YOU PROVIDED. WE WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT WE ENJOYED IT AND GREATLY APPRECIATE THE HARD WORK IN THE TELLING OF THIS AMAZING STORY. BRENDA IS VERY LUCKY TO HAVE HAD PARK SANDERS AS HER FATHER AND WANTED TO EXPRESS HER APPRECIATION FOR THE STORY OF THE 1950 UNION MILLS BASKETBALL TEAM . IT WAS FUN LOOKING THROUGH ALL OF THE OLD PHOTOS AND PERIODICALS. GREAT JOB! LOVED THE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Matt did an excellent job researching and writing this book. If you love Hoosier basketball you will love this book, Congrats Matt!!

Just finished Season of Upsets, by Matthew A. Werner of Union Mills. It chronicles the 1949-50 basketball season in La Porte County, Indiana. But goes well beyond, into the hearts and minds of players, students, coaches, teachers, parents, sportswriters, politicians, city slickers, farmers, onlookers, and on into the harder times we lived in back then. As Etta Mae Malstaff Hannon (Union Mills class of ’51) says in the book, “Basketball was all we had."

I read the entire book over three evenings, sometimes chocked with nostalgia. For those of you with attachments to your home team, this book will keep you glued to it until you finish. Matthew captures the spirit of life in rural La Porte County accurately and perfectly. He has researched and written a wonderful book, interviewing some 75 surviving La Porte Countyans in the process, researching newspaper archives, while digging deeply into our pasts to places I’d long forgotten.

His is a remarkably fine book for all of us. Although the Union Mills community is the focal point of the story, those of us from Wanatah, Mill Creek, Westville and other county communities all have their share of space. You will remember names, places & faces, as this book is filled with photos as well as long forgotten but now treasured memories.

Season is available through Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble, or if you are computer handicapped, I will help you get a copy.

Uncle Johnny
Westville Blackhawk, Class of '56

I started reading it yesterday at 4:30 pm and finished around 11pm. A great book!

Thank you Matt for your wonderfully written book, and like the late Paul Harvey use to do, telling the world “the rest of the story”. I grew up listing to my Dad’s many stories surrounding this time in his young life, looked through the pictures and memorabilia he had saved many times, and some of my closest friends growing up were the children of some of the young men on this Union Mills basketball team. I always understood by the way Dad spoke about it what it meant to him to have been a small part of it, and what Coach Sanders meant to him, and how influential he was in my Dad’s life. Yet until now, after reading your book, have I ever fully understood what this one season in Indiana high school basketball some 60 plus years ago meant to so many others. The valuable life lessons that these young men and women learned from this experience, from their coaches, from their parents, and from their communities can now be learned by anyone who reads your book. If the reader learns nothing more than the fact that anyone, from anywhere can achieve the unimaginable if they work hard and believe they can, it is well worth the amount of time it takes to read your book. I plan to have both my Son and Grandson read your book as well, partly because I feel it is important for them to also understand what this meant to their Grandfather, but more importantly because of the life lessons they can learn from it. Thank you Matt for taking the time out of your life to see this project through to completion. Congratulations, you should be very proud of a job well done!! Nile Goad-(oldest son of Gene Goad)