Dead Poole

It was a bad week to have appeared in Hoosiers, as Kent Poole, who played Merle Webb in the greatest sports movie of all time, killed himself at his home on Sept. 11 at the age of 39. Poole led his own small-town team into the Indiana basketball state finals in 1982, then art imitated life, with a little more success, in the 1986 film. Best remembered for the line, “Let’s win this for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here,” as the team prepared for the championship, Poole’s only screen appearance was Hoosiers, not counting a crappy Molly Ringwald-Andrew McCarthy 1988 flick. He returned to his farm; reportedly Poole had battled depression in recent years and was in the process of a divorce.