“The Shroyer name in Somerset was pretty big,” Tom said. “They were neighbors and they were good ballplayers at Somerset High School and that was what Larry aspired to be.” In fact, Larry became Somerset’s all-time leading scorer by the time he graduated in 1956. He led Wabash County in scoring his junior year. It would be wrong, though, to say he eclipsed them. “When you grow up in the Shroyer family,” Larry told me, “You gotta play basketball.” In 2023, he told me,

As a freshman, Dad scored four points in a 17-15 upset win over Wabash for the 1932 sectional title. Basketball was a big part of life around there. I heard Dad’s cousin Kay Peas tell 1950s Somerset High star Larry Knee, that she remembers her dad, Bob Shroyer, getting so upset watching a Somerset game that he lost his teeth. “He yelled so much, he blew out his false teeth, and they hit Guiniverre Garst on the way down.”