Decatur (1,800?) Built 1938
July 26, 2024
July 26, 2024
One of the things that really grew my love for basketball in Indiana was the fact that all my friends around me were as obsessed with it as I was. There were 7-8 of us that were together all the time. School, high school games on Friday nights, and our own AAU games on the weekends. What I've learned as I've gotten older is that what we called AAU wasn't really AAU. All our players went to Westview. We traveled to tournaments that were at maximum an hour away and came home in plenty time for church on Sunday morning. We were not playing on any kind of major circuit. I don't think that kind of thing even existed in northeast Indiana. What I do know is that we had a whole lot of fun. We loved the basketball and all the random nonsense we did before and after games when we would travel to Fort Wayne or wherever else our games happened to be.
One of my favorite memories was spending an afternoon between games at one of my friend's cousin's house in Decatur. They had a nice pond where you could dive off some rocks and there were so many catfish that they'd come up and nibble your toes. I remember that carefree afternoon like it was yesterday. I had never heard of Decatur before, and didn't think about it again until six years later when we ended up playing that same cousin of my friend in the regional game my junior year when he played for Adams Central. We scouted them at the Stardome in South Adams which is a core memory for me in my journey to loving gyms the way I do now. Eleven years after that, everything came full circle as I had the chance to visit the original Decatur High School gym. I wish my 6th grade self could have played in this gym. I don't think I would have fully appreciated the history, but I definitely would have thought it was pretty freaking cool.
The Decatur gym is a unique one in that it existed as the home of two different schools due to the common tragedy that was consolidation. It was built as the home of the Decatur Yellow Jackets in 1938 and served that post proudly until it consolidated with Decatur Catholic and Monmouth to form Bellmont in 1967 (which is the first time I've ever heard of a Catholic school consolidating with a public school. It only existed as Bellmont's home gym for three years when they built a new gym for the new district. It now serves as a community building where it is used for a wide variety of activities. Other than one single monstrosity that we will cover later, it has largely been left untouched and is in pristine condition. It's an homage to the seven different sectional winning teams that played there while it was open.
The first word that came to mind when I stepped into this beauty was "dark." They haven't yet ruined this place with the obsessive desire for LED floodlights that has infected many athletic directors in today's day and age. It's dark, it's dingy, and it's perfect. The bleachers are really in shadows, while the light only shines directly on the court like a light coming down from some celestial place above. The gym has a horseshoe design that wraps all the way around the court except for the wall with the stage behind one baseline. It's very similar to Lebanon and Frankton in that regard, but the ceiling here is a lot lower which makes the confines feel much more cozy. There's also a five foot brick wall that wraps around the entire gym only a couple of feet from the out of bounds lines on all sides. Not only does it add a fun little element of danger to the game, but if you're sitting in the first row above that wall, you feel like you are right on top of the action unlike any other gym I've been too. Between the brick wall, seating on all sides, and the low roof, I can only imagine how electric this place must have been when it was full.
Another thing that makes the gym very striking is the color scheme. The bricks throughout the entire venue are a conglomeration of slightly darker brown hues. It's a nice backdrop for the splashes of dark and light blue that cover all the permanent sections of bleachers above the brick wall. The only other places you see the blue in any shade are a dark band around the perimeter of the hardwood court and inside the small center court circle with a red Bellmont "B" inside that. "Braves" and "Squaws" vertical signage is also painted in this shade of blue on either side of stage (This honors the nicknames for the respective boys and girls athletic teams at the school. Having different nicknames for each gender wasn't uncommon back then). You don't often see a design that centers around two different shades of the same color like this, but it really works here. The rest of the hardwood court has been stained a golden brown color that really pops under the direct light above the court. The other things worth noting at this level of the gym are the little decorative vents built into the bottom of the brick wall. They look like something you would find in your grandma's 100 year old farmhouse, not a classic Hoosier gym, but they're a nice touch!
Looking above the brick wall, you'll find nine rows of permanent wood bleachers extending upwards on three sides, including a couple beautiful corner sections. There is an awesome row of stairs here that heads up on a straight diagonal to the very corner of the gym. The bleachers extend all the way against the baseline wall that has the stage. Along the upper walls you'll find some old Bellmont signage and doors that lead to who knows where. One has a step cut out of the top row of bleachers, and another that sits in the corner has a little stair section jutting out that you have to climb to reach it. Just some quirks that make it a little more eccentric. Now to tackle the monstrosity that was mentioned earlier: About 1/3 of the seating has been overtaken by an exercise room that was framed out over the bleachers along one sideline. It's very large and very beige. It doesn't drastically take away from aura of the rest of the gym as it's still easy to see what it would have originally looked like since it is a mirror image of the other side, but it's just kind of there. Part of me understands the need for these gyms to adapt to the current needs of the community that use them, the other part of me can't help but wonder and hope that every other possible option was explored before they decided to do this. It doesn't even seem practical! I can't imagine it was an easy undertaking. But I digress, it's not a fatal flaw. The wall with the stage is pretty standard for a gym built in this period. There is an old scoreboard hanging there. The last feature worth noting are the twin practice hoops that have been hung right above the brick wall on each sideline at center court. These must have been added after the gym stopped hosting high school games, because there's no way they would block the best sightline in the gym. At least I hope not.
Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Adapt or die? As I continue to research these shuttered gyms, I find so many articles about ones that have been recently razed for one reason or another, often just in the last few years. My wife shakes her head at me when I tell her that it honestly hurts me every time I read about one succumbing to this fate. I wish I would have started all of this ten years ago. Time is not my friend. More often than not, the communities around these gyms simply do not have the resources or need for them anymore. Many of the communities themselves died out when their town lost their school to the dreaded "C" word. Those that have hung on have managed to innovate and find new ways to give these buildings a purpose. They make look a little different, but they're still here. In every one I've visited so far, you can still feel that same indelible spirit that not even Father Time can vanquish. That spirit is alive and well here in Decatur.
