Castle (Old) - Hoosier Gym Journey

Castle (Old) (1,500?) Built 1959
July 30, 2026

If you turn on the news today or open any kind of social media app, it certainly appears as if the sky is falling. Now that's not necessarily a new phenomenon, people have felt like that when watching the news going back to the days of Walter Cronkite. It feels especially calamitous though these days with the dawn of artificial intelligence. If you believe everything you hear, apparently we will all be replaced or destroyed by automated systems and robots before we know it. Sounds pretty scary, but I'm not exactly convinced. While I understand that some of the capabilites of AI are certainly impressive and concerning, and I think the over reliance on them is dumbing down our society in embarrassing ways, I'm not hitting the panic button just yet. There seems to be some fairly glaring limitations. I try and avoid AI for the most part on principle, but the one time I can't seem to avoid it is when I'm doing research. Google has its own AI, and my goodness is it not intelligent in the least bit. More often than not it tries to grab information from all over the web and combine it into a mismatch word salad that is completely inaccurate. It actually makes my job harder rather than easier. For example, when I was trying to research the history of Castle High School and its gyms down in Warrick County, it refused to give me any useful information. It was determined to tell me all about the Chrysler Fieldhouse in New Castle. While I love the New Castle Fieldhouse as much as anyone, that is not what I was looking for! After sifting through the the erroneous search results it insisted on giving me, I finally found a couple useful things, and I'm glad I did. Despite what AI may think, the history of Castle High School is certainly worth telling.

When I first started looking into all the old gyms across the state, someone mentioned Newburgh to me. It's a small town down along the Ohio River in Warrick County. I heard and read conflicting reports, but eventually found that the old gym is still intact at the current elementary school. It's now used as the cafeteria, but some of the original gym components like sections of bleachers are still there. I got excited and started looking at the rest of the area. A little further north, I realized that Chandler High School's old gym is also a part of the of the current elementary school there. After battling the previously mentioned Google search results, I found out that these two schools consolidated with one another in 1959 to form Castle High School. Looking in Dale Lawrence's Hoosier Hysteria Roadbook, I saw Castle's current gym was built in 1975. Where did they play the first 15 years? A little more fighting with Google and I realized that Castle's original high school building is now their middle school building, and the original high school gym still stands within it. That's three old gyms hanging on in the same district, I love to see it. I made my first ever trip down to the greater Evansville area on the last day of my summer break. My first stop was at the old Castle gym. The Castle Knights won two Boonville sectionals while calling this place home in 1961 and 1962. It's nothing flashy, but it has a really nice 60s-70s feel to it.

While it may have reminded me of the disco era, there is one feature that firmly plants this gym right in the 50s when it was built. The big metal trusses that cross the roofline in a wide "V," and then curve downward at a ninety degree angle to meet the floor were widely used in the 50s, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen them in a gym post-1960. This would probably be the latest example of them that I've seen. I've always thought they give these old gyms a cool look. One oddity about the old Castle gym is that one of the sides has an upper deck. This is more indicative of a 60s era gym, and I don't think I've ever seen a gym with these particular trusses that also has an upper level. Given that the upper deck has a tall wall underneath with storage rooms inside, and it doesn't really leave any room for lower level bleachers, it makes me wonder if it originally had just one big single section of bleachers like the other sideline does. It would make sense that they built out the storage rooms and then put bleachers on top, but I can't say for sure. As it stands today, there are about 7-8 rows of plastic bleachers on top and none on the bottom. The opposite side has one big section of retractable wooden bleachers that go up 12 rows. It's possible they're original, but they don't quite look 65 years old.

Above the bleachers on both sides are long horizontal windows letting in a good amount of natural light. The ceiling is very high, which gives the place a nice airy feel to it. One baseline wall is covered from top to bottom in noise-dampening padding. On one hand I don't love the aesthetics of them, but on the other hand I've never been able to leave one of my niece's junior high volleyball games without a raging headache from all the screaming, so I get it. The opposite baseline wall has an awesome mural of a countryside scene set in midieval times with "Castle North Squires" written in period-appropriate script. It's magnificent. Mr. Craig Parker, who is the athletic director at the school, told me that there was originally a big stage at this end. When I looked a little closer I could indeed see the faint outline of it on the brickwork. As much as I love the mural, I'm sure the stage made the whole place feel a little more grand. The floor design is simple but well put together. I particularly love the harvest-gold color of the hardwood. It's outlined by a dark blue perimeter with "Castle Squires" written across the baselines in nice yellow block letters. There's a Castle North Squires coat of arms at center court which matches the theme perfectly.

This is the pocket of the state I was probably the least familiar with when I started all my gym research. It's quickly become one of the regions I'm most fascinated with. Yes, the Evansville schools have a lot of history to them and I've enjoyed diving into it all, but the outlying towns have just as much community pride and tales of Hoosier Hysteria to tell. I'm already trying to find a time when I can make it down to a Castle game in their current gym during the season. I also want to see the old gyms in Chandler and Newburgh. Just from talking to a few people, this is clearly a community who still appreciates good basketball and has supported their local teams for decades. It's always neat to see the old gyms where the roots of that love for basketball were laid down and started to grow. If AI can hold off on destroying the earth until I'm able to check them all out, that would be great.