LEGENDS OF THE PAST: CHRIS HATCH (SOUTH RANGE)

CANFIELD OH- Take a stroll through the halls of South Range High School and you’ll find a piece of the original high school preserved and kept on the wall. This of course being the Raiders Hall of Fame. Scan the faces of greats from South Range’s Past and you’ll find Chris Hatch.

Chris was a no doubt Hall of Fame induction. He’s the class of Raider boys basketball. A member of the class of 2001, no one in the boys program has scored more points than Chris. For 19 seasons he stood alone as the sole 1,000 point scorer in the program. This season, Chris Brooks finally gave him some company on the list. Must be something about the name Chris.

Hatch was part of a Raider team that you could say was ahead of the curve. They played a fast paced spread out style of basketball that is seen a lot more now in the area than it was in the late 90’s to early 2000’s. No team dared try to match their pace, instead the game plan was to slow the game down. The Raiders has multiple games through Hatch’s career scoring in the 90’s. Even breaking 100. The offense was prolific. So much so that Chris can still recall the few times defenses had success against them, and exactly what defense the team ran.

Chris continued his basketball career at Westminster. He says of all the schools he was looking at he felt the most comfortable with the coaching staff at Westminster. It didn’t hurt that campus was a short drive from home. Now Chris has a family of his own, a wife and three children. He lives in Arizona. Big things are happening for him, but still he looks fondly on his humble beginnings in South Range’s gym in North Lima.

Anthony Hartwig had a chance to catch up with Chris via video conferencing. They discussed the South Range Springfield rivalry, growing up watching Michael Jordan, and much more. Go back in time with Raider basketball with the latest installment of Legends Of The Past.

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