Broad Ripple (3,522) Built 1988
March 4, 2025: MTI Knowledge vs. Liberty Christian (Boys)
March 4, 2025: MTI Knowledge vs. Liberty Christian (Boys)
Sometime last summer when I had the idea of visiting all the old gyms I could find along with the current ones, I started researching the old gyms and lost schools of Indianapolis. I knew that a few had recently closed, but I didn't realize the extent to which these high schools have disappeared. Indianapolis Wood (who Johnny Wilson led as the first black coach of an integrated high school in the city) is the first that I can find record of falling in 1978, and Attucks soon followed in 1986. Over the ensuing years we lost Arlington, Northwest, Marshall, Howe, Shortridge, and Broad Ripple. Attucks and Shortridge are the only ones that have returned as a high schools. A few of the other others have been repurposed as middle schools, one is a business building, and one sits vacant. I've been wracking my brain over the ensuing months thinking of ways I can make it into these gyms. Middle school games are a potential option, but are nearly impossible to attend with my own school schedule. I've found administrators in these big city schools to be much less open to outsiders coming and just taking some pictures than other places. I just haven't found a good way to go about it. You can then imagine my shock and joy when I was perusing John Harrell's website to see this year's sectional sites and saw Purdue Polytechnic Broad Ripple as one of the hosts. I hadn't realized another new charter had opened up and was using part of the Broad Ripple campus for their school and the gym for their athletic events. While I won't mention the current school's name again in this blog, I guess I'm at least grateful for its existence, because I probably wouldn't have been able to make this visit otherwise.
While the future of the Broad Ripple campus as a whole remains a little rocky, the history it is founded on is rock solid. While their gym was built in 1988, you can trace their basketball history all the way back to 1914 when they lost in one of the first state tournaments ever to Akron by a score of 8-32. They haven't had as much tournament success as you would maybe expect from a school that lasted for over a century, but they did bring home one of the most special state titles of the single class era in 1980. It took a last second shot from over half court in the Final Four game to send the Rockets to the title game against New Albany where they became one of only a handful of Indianapolis teams to win it all. The list of great players that have come through this school, and many through this very gym, extends like a scroll: George Hill, Jeff Robinson, Mike Woodson, Mark Lenoir, Ron Patterson, it just goes on and on. Of all the old high school gyms we have lost in Indianapolis, it's probably a toss up between Broad Ripple and Arlington in terms of which is missed the most. A lot of people in the city have strong ties to both. When Broad Ripple, Arlington, and Northwest all closed in 2018, the backlash from the Broad Ripple community was certainly the strongest. The roots run deep here. While IPS have done their best to strip any sense of that heritage from the gym, you can still feel the spirit in it.
Walking into the Broad Ripple gym in 2025 feels a bit like doing one final walkthrough of your childhood home before you move your parents out and into the retirement home. The bones of the place are still there, there's a couple specific reminders of what used to be, but it's pretty bare. All banners, plaques, and displays have been removed. I've heard that some interested parties have stepped in to make sure that they are being thoughtfully cared for so they can be displayed elsewhere in the future in a meaningful way instead of being thrown into storage and lost. While this is encouraging, I can't help but think that they maybe should've just been left in place, especially since IPS still owns and runs the school. It's not like it's being inhabited by a corporate conglomerate or something like that. The walls, the picture displays, the trophy cases, everything is completely empty. I'm not sure what the center court circle used to look like, but they've covered it up with a hideous "IPS Athletics" sticker. Why!?! They've thankfully left the rest of the floor design alone along with a mural and a couple of signs. It's not much, but it's enough to remind people of who this gym rightfully belongs to: the Broad Ripple Rockets.
The nuts and bolts of the gym aren't anything crazy. You have a normal bilevel setup along the sidelines with no baseline seating to speak of. The original wooden bleachers are still intact. There are about 15 rows on both the top and bottom levels. One unique feature is that at the very bottom of the upper level sections, there is a little riser for the feet of the people sitting on the bottom row. I've never seen anything like it, and have no clue why it would possibly be necessary, but it's cool! Along the very top safety rail of the sideline section that doesn't butt up against the wall are wooden signs with "Broad Ripple Rockets" written in old-timey font. Both baseline walls are almost completely bare now except for a nice little orange "Rockets" mural with a rocketship taking off underneath it along the bottom of one. There are little press lookout areas in the two corners of the upper level opposite the main entrance. The opposite baseline side has little lookout windows on the ends of the wall that provide cool vantage points. The hallway with the main concession stand runs right behind here, and it makes you wonder how cool it would've been if they just ran these "windows" down the entire length of the wall. There are a couple elements left from the original hardwood floor as well. The script honoring William R. Smith Sr. whom the floor is named after is still there along the sidelines. The black outline around the court with "Broad Ripple" and "Rockets" written along the baselines in faded and chipped paint is still there. It's not much, but once again it provides you with just enough character to take you back to better days. A solid orange and black stripe crosses the entire gym about halfway up the wall.
I have a list in an Excel document of all the active gyms I still need to visit and another one for all the shuttered gyms I haven't made it to yet. I have them all sorted by how far away from my house they are. I've cleared out most of the ones that are within 45 minutes from me, so the majority of the current gyms that are "close" to where I live are in Indy. Many of them are lifeless and lawless charters that I just have no desire to go see, and I'm excited to see just about any gym in Indiana so that's saying something. The few old IPS gyms that are on my shuttered gym list are actually very high on my list of places I want to get to soon, I just don't really have a plan for how to make it happen. It's an unfortunate dichotomy of the world we live in with the advent of school choice. Indy gyms are often criticized by many, including me at times, for being small and sterile. It's a shame that the few that have a little bit of character are the ones that have had hosting high school games taken away from them. Broad Ripple is a prime example of this, so I'm glad that for at least one week it is getting a small taste of the attention it deserves.
