Harley Sheets recounts Lebanon basketball history, consolidation research on city podcast

Harley Sheets, a former Lebanon High School player and local historian, told listeners on episode 197 of the Levon Lebanon podcast that he wrote a book about high school consolidations and has since documented Lebanon’s basketball history in multiple volumes.

Sheets, 90, described growing up in Detroit during World War II, returning to Lebanon as a fifth grader and being pulled into organized basketball, a start that eventually led him to research and publish local high-school basketball histories. "That's how I happened to write my first book on high school consolidations," Sheets said on the podcast.

The interview, hosted by Joe Labage, the City of Lebanon communications and community development director, touched on several topics: the early dominance of teams in what Sheets called the state’s “cradle of basketball,” anecdotes about coaches and players from Lebanon’s past, how he researched and sold his books, and recent local efforts to celebrate the town’s…