Over the years Angle served on various committees with the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 2010.
GREENFIELD – To many, Larry “Hoss” Angle was a revered coach with a penchant for lifting players up as he led a number of high school boys basketball teams throughout the decades.
To Eastern Hancock’s JV boys basketball coach, Joe Paxton, he was simply “Coach.”
Angle passed away Aug. 12 at the age of 80 in his Greenfield home, with his wife Kathy by his side.
Paxton, who played for Angle at Greenfield-Central High School in the mid-1990s, is among the former players who paid homage to the revered coach on social media last week.
“Despite the fact that I was an average basketball player, at best, back in the day, Coach was the No. 1 influence on me to go into teaching and coaching,” Paxton posted to X on Wednesday.
“He will be missed,” he said.
According to his obituary, Angle farmed in Rush County for many years, but his true passion was coaching and teaching. He racked up 375 career wins throughout his years coaching varsity high school basketball for the Rushville, Carmel, Tipton, Greenfield-Central and Indian Creek school systems.
Over the years, Coach Angle won multiple sectionals, regionals and semi-state titles, and led the the Rushville Lions to the state finals in 1976.
He retired from coaching after his final season with Indian Creek High School in 2005.
Over the years, Angle served on various committees with the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 2010.
His family shared that Angle traveled nationally to attend clinics and conferences in order to learn as much about the game of basketball as he could. For years, he never missed a single NCAA Men’s Final Four tourney.
At 6-foot-4, Angle was a formidable player in his own right. Born and raised in Rush County, he played at the small town New Salem High School, but was the second-leading scorer in the state as a senior in the 1960-61 season, averaging 30.3 points.
He went on to play college ball at Utah State, where he helped the Aggies to NCAA tournament appearances in 1963 and ’64. He averaged a team-high 16.5 points per game as a senior co-captain in 1965-66.
After college, Angle returned to his roots in Rush County, where he coached the junior high boys basketball team for one year before taking on the role of Rushville’s reserve coach in 1967.
He took over as head coach in 1973, and two years later led the Lions to a 60-14 record and the school’s first regional title in more than a decade.
The following year, he led the team to win the semi-state title for the first and only time in school history, missing the state championship by a 6-point deficit in the final game.
Angle eventually coached Greenfield-Central’s boys varsity team for three seasons, ending his career coaching at Indian Creek High School in Johnson County when his son J.R. Angle was on the roster.
“The thing I think about most with him is how much he helped people no matter their athletic ability,” his son told the Indianapolis Star.
“From the top kid to the bench kids, he was also working to teach a life lesson or give them resources to help themselves,” he said, adding that his dad had “that perfect balance of knowing when to flip that dad ‘on’ and turn the coach ‘off’ … we had a great connection.”
That connection led to success on the court, with the younger Angle racking up the fourth-best high school scoring average in the state at Indian Creek High School before making his mark at Iowa University with an NCAA tournament appearance, which no doubt made his father proud.
Fittingly, the funeral for Coach Angle took place Saturday in the Rushville High School gym.
