If Your Name is Mount in Lebanon, Ind., It Can Help--and Hinder

If your name is Mount and you live in Lebanon, Ind., you are expected to play basketball.

If your name is Rich Mount, you are also fighting inevitable comparisons with a famous father who is still regarded as one of the best players to come out of this basketball-crazy state.

The younger Mount, a 6-foot-3 junior at Lebanon High School, already gets about 10 letters a week from major colleges around the country. But with his 27-point scoring average, it’s more than just family history that’s drawing the attention.

“Being Rick Mount’s son has been a great deal of help, from the standpoint his father has taught him a lot about offensive basketball,” Lebanon Coach Dave Carney says of Rich, already seen as one of the top candidates for Indiana Mr. Basketball next year. “But it’s been tough for him at times because people want to compare Rich with his father.”

Rich’s grandfather, Pete Mount, led Lebanon to a runner-up finish in the 1943 state tournament and was considered the school’s greatest player of all time . . . until Rick, Pete’s son and Rich’s father, came along.

Rick Mount, of course, became even more famous than Pete. He was Mr. Basketball in 1966, the first high school athlete pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated and an All-American at Purdue, where he led the Boilermakers to a runner-up finish to UCLA in the 1969 NCAA tournament.

Rick Mount played professional ball for five years and retired when his son, Rich, was 5 years old. He now works at a sporting goods store in Lafayette.

“I saw him play in Utah, but I was too young to remember much,” says Rich, 18. ‘I was maybe eight or nine when I realized how great he was. I thought it was pretty neat, having a dad like that is pretty cool.

“I said if I worked at it, maybe I could be as good. The thing is, most people remember him at Purdue more than in high school. That’s what they’re comparing me with, and that’s hard to compare.”

Rick Mount is the second leading scorer in Indiana high school history with 2,595 points and a 27.3 career average. In college, he was a two-time All-American and averaged 34.8 points a game for his career.

Rich Mount has 1,353 points and a 21.8 career average--24.2 over the past two years, 27.8 this season and 29.4 over the past nine games.

“He taught me to really work hard at everything,” Rich says of the help he got from his father. “He said stick with it, and I got a lot out of it. We’d play at the park every evening for two hours. In the afternoons, I’ll shoot an hour and a half. I end up playing five or six hours a day since I was in seventh grade.”

It was when Rich was in the eighth grade that he first got statewide attention, although it wasn’t the kind of publicity he would have preferred.

His father got him “red-shirted,” held back a year so he could gain more maturity and experience.

“I think it helped me,” Rich says. “I don’t talk about it much, it’s been forgotten about mostly. but it helped me a lot, mentally and physically. Mentally, mostly. It made me mentally tougher. I don’t know why, but I knew at that point I needed to be mentally tougher.”

The Lebanon School Board voted to let Rich, an honor student, repeat the eighth grade. The Indiana High School Athletic Association, which has rigid eligibility regulations, has no jurisdiction at the junior high level, but the statewide publicity surrounding the Mount case later prompted the Lebanon board to ban the practice.

By that time, Rich was in high school, where he averaged 17.1 points a game as a freshman and 21.5 as a sophomore. This year, besides the 27.8 average--the eighth highest in the state--he is rebounding about 3.5 per game and shooting better than 50% from the field and 90% from the foul line. He had a streak of 38 straight free throws, which was snapped last week.

If he does become Mr. Basketball next year, he would be the first one whose father also was a Mr. Basketball.

“That’s a dream for every kid in high school basketball. I’m working on that,” the young Mount said.