Fort Wayne Bishop Dwenger (2,200) Built 1963
December 16, 2025: DeKalb vs. Fort Wayne Bishop Dwenger (Boys)
Picking what games to go to each week is something I look forward to more than I probably should. It's like opening a Christmas present each Sunday night when I hop on John Harrell's website and check out the docket for the week. I always try to watch the Anderson girls team once a week when I can as some former students from my school are now on the team, and then I try and pick one or two games at a gym I haven't been to yet. Usually this entails setting around a 90 minute radius from my house and seeing what games fall inside of it (the radius gets wider on special occasions when kids are not tagging along). Once I get a list of those games, I usually just use John Harrell's score prediction to decide which game I'm going to attend unless there's a special reason I want to go to a particular one. Whichever game looks like it's going to be the closest in score, that's where I head! This not only helps me avoid watching a bunch of blowouts throughout the season, but it also keeps me from just picking whichever gym I think is going to be the coolest. Ultimately I'm trying to visit every place in the state. I don't want the last hundred to only be the ones I've avoided over the years, I want to save some good ones for the end. This formula is how I ended up at Bishop Dwenger on a random Tuesday night in December.
I had of course heard of Dwenger before, but really knew nothing about them before my visit. My only knowledge of teams from Fort Wayne with Bishop in the name were from the time DeShaun Thomas broke my 14 year old heart when Luers bounced Westview from the 2008 semistate. Dwenger is the other Fort Wayne team with Bishop in the name. Looking back in Dale Lawrence's Hoosier Hysteria Roadbook, he says that Dwenger consistently had the best following in the Fort Wayne area. That was 20ish years ago, but you could still see the vestiges of it on a Tuesday night against a team that I don't think is a big rival or anything. The Dwenger fans took up a good portion of the home side of the bleachers and were loud but respectful in a way you would probably expect from a traditional Catholic school crowd. The Dwenger Saints have had a decent amount of success worth cheering for over the years. They've captured 10 sectional and 6 regional titles spread out over the one class era and in 3A. I didn't really have any expectations about the gym. I figured it would be on the smaller side and kind of boring as most parochial schools are. I wasn't too far off, but it did flash in a couple of ways.
Dwenger has a lot of white walls and two sideline sections of bleachers that go up further than I would have expected. There are 20 rows of the navy blue plastic seats on each side by my count. At the top are narrow rectangular windows that remind me more of what you'd find at a prison than in a gym. The baseline wall above the entrance has standard vinyl athletic accomplishment banners that don't exactly catch the eye, but the way they are laid out does. They start in the corners and kind of work down at a diagonal towards the middle of the wall where an IHSAA banner lies (a very weird centerpiece). I like the way it looks. The opposite baseline wall features a very minimalist stage. The fancy-schmancy school crest is adorned above it. To the right is a Catholic crucifix that hangs behind some curved glass on a navy blue backdrop. Hidden in the very corner of this wall are track and field and gymnastics school record boards as well. The playing surface is about as Plain Jane as they come, though I do really like the light-golden hue of the hardwood. It really seemed to shine under the lights. A navy blue "BD" sits at center court with "Saints" written in thin lettering across the he baselines. The inside of the foul lane is also the same navy blue.
After the game I was looking out in the foyer for anything that could give me a touchstone to the older days of the basketball program (it does date all the way back to at least 1966), but I found nothing. The oldest thing I found was a football picture from the 90s. There was a framed center court piece from the old floor which I usually love, but this time it just made me laugh because it is just a mirror image of what currently sits at center court. I'm sure Dwenger has a strong basketball tradition that they are proud of, Dale Lawrence wouldn't have mentioned it in his book if they didn't. There just wasn't a ton of evidence of it on this night besides a decent crowd that was into the game. Maybe I'll come back again in another 20 years after I've checked off the rest of the gyms and get a better glimpse of it.
