Greensburg (Current) (5,041) Built 1971
February 27, 2026: East Central vs. Greensburg (Boys)
The last week of the regular season is always kind of a bummer for me. For four months I've sat at my computer on Sunday nights planning where I'm going to go for the week. Each week brings new gyms, games, and experiences with people and communities I've never interacted with before. When it all wraps up at the end of February, there's a real sense of finality to it. I get more nostalgic. I walk around my day job at school thinking about the places I've been and the places I wanted to get to but just didn't get the chance. This is also when state testing starts in my classroom, so I walk around my room counting ceiling tiles and doing random rankings in my head of places I've been during the season because I'm not allowed to do anything else while the kids work. This season was no different. I started the last week of the regular season with a trip to University. That was depressing. I wanted to end the year on a high note, so I started looking around at what was relatively close to home, and nothing was standing out for the last Friday night. Then I saw a school was playing a home game that I had my eye on for awhile. It's a place I've been to and driven through a lot in the last year. It's a place with not one, not two, but three gyms in the town still standing and being used (the armory gym was used over the years from time to time by a variety of high schools in the surrounding area). Greensburg is 1 hour and 45 minutes away which is much further than I was planning on traveling that night, but it seemed to be calling to me. I visited their old gym back in the fall and was blown away by it, but their current gym seemed to have the potential to be just as special, if not more. The pictures I'd seen always stuck in my mind. The nostalgia was too strong. I packed up my boys and off we went.
One reason the siren's song seemed to be pulling me so strongly to Greensburg was that the bleachers in this gym just looked incredible in pictures. They also looked pretty old, which created a sense of urgency to visit the gym sooner rather than later. Every summer I see one or two Facebook posts on my timeline from athletic departments boasting about the new plastic bleachers they've just installed. I had to see the originals here before it was too late, and man I'm glad I did (more on them later). The wooden bleachers here are 55 years old. This gym replaced the old beauty that is now a part of the middle school in 1971. While I am sure it was hard for Pirate fans to leave such a historic venue, they couldn't have been upset for too long when they saw the new place. Seating over 5,000 people, this place is a cathedral. It's size has allowed Greensburg to consistently host sectional rounds since it opened. Between the two gyms, the Pirates have had home court advantage for almost every sectional they've played in over the last 100 years with just a few exceptions. They have certainly taken advantage of it. While they brought home a ton of postseason hardware in the old gym, they've found just as much success while playing in this one: 21 sectionals and 8 regionals evenly split out across the single and multi-class eras, and two 3A state championships as well. Hoosier Hysteria runs deep in Greensburg, even if it doesn't always get mentioned with the other traditional powerhouses in the state. As I've visited their two iconic gyms this year, it hasn't been lost on me. You can feel it in the air when you sit in the stands, the same stands that absolutely took my breath away when I walked into the building.
To seat over 5,000 people in a gym that isn't a bowl, you're going to need some big sections of bleachers, and they have that in spades here. You could call this place a "mini Seymour," but that feels disrespectful, because there's nothing miniature about it. There are two levels of massive sideline bleachers on both sides. In a lot of gyms either the bottom or top is on the smaller side, but not here. The bottom sideline levels feature 16 rows and the upper levels house about 16 as well (counting the upper level is hard using my pictures because the place is so gigantic that I don't have one clear frame that contains the whole place!). The only baseline bleachers are on the upper level opposite of the entrance. Here you'll find 10 more rows of retractable bleachers. At the very top of all the upper bleachers are little walls of bleacher benches which I've seen at a handful of other places. I've never quite understood them. Not only are the sections of bleachers gargantuan, but they're just stunning. They're all stained a classic gold color, though some have slightly varying hues due to aging over the years. Seat numbers are painted in a pretty blue font with dividers between each one. Seat numbers are a thing of the past, so when you find vintage bleachers that still have them, it's always a treat. I wouldn't call these traditional "bleachers of death" because they do have much wider surfaces to put your feet, but there are still open slats underneath where you can lose things. Like all original bleachers from this era, there aren't a lot of stairs, but the couple of sets that run up these beauties are painted blue which makes them pop and gives it a really cool look from afar. One paragraph dedicated solely to bleachers is probably enough, so I'll stop, but these are worth it. They're on the Mount Rushmore of the best bleachers I've seen in the over 250 gyms I've been to.
Bleachers are always the first thing that catch my eye in a gym, but they can't make a gym great by themselves. Thankfully there is a lot else here to talk about. Looking at old pictures, the wall adornments here have been modernized over the years. If you look at the baseline end opposite of the entrance, the lower wall is painted Greensburg blue in the middle, with exits on the sides. There are windows looking into another room behind the wall which is a little unique. On that wall are a few modern state and semi-state championship decals for both boys and girls basketball (I didn't mention their girls program earlier, but they've had a lot of success themselves). Banners for local sponsors fill the rest of the space on this side. The baseline end where you enter the gym is the only side without seating, but there is plenty to see on the walls. Alongside a massive American flag is the same Eastern Indiana Athletic Conference team display you'll see at other schools in the conference. I've seen a lot worse. This part of the wall juts out just a little, and underneath that jut-out is a row of Indiana All-Star jerseys commemorating past Pirate greats. Off to the sides on the wall are decals featuring the modern Pirate logo that is used in various places in both this gym and the old gym. It's the only thing that doesn't quite seem to fit the aesthetic of the rest of the gym.
Down on the floor level, the court design is simple and elegant. The whole court is stained a light gold color, with an ever-so-slightly darker shade inside the three point arcs. It's one of the most subtle differences you'll find on a court. A giant blue "G" sits at center court. "Greensburg" is written in a gorgeous blue font across one baseline and "Pirates" across the other. "Boys Basketball State Champions 2013, 3A, 2014" is written in normal black font inside the sidelines. It takes up a lot of space, and I probably would've done something with a little more cursive flair, but it looks okay. Opposite of half court from this script on both sides are more pirate head decals. Again, I would've just left them off. There are two other random oddities I'd like to point out. One is a metal caged cart of some sort that was sitting in one of the upper corners of the gym. I've never seen anything like it, and I have no idea what it's for, but it looks old! The other is the metal tracks underneath the bleachers that I presume help fold the retractable bleachers in and out. They lay flat on the ground just like train tracks. I'm sure they exist underneath other old bleachers, I've just never personally seen them. I happened to find them when one of my kids inevitably dropped one of their cars thought the slats.
This was a late night for me and the boys. Usually if I take them both this far it's on a Saturday afternoon, not a Friday night after a full day of school for all of us. We left halfway through the second half and were exhausted when we got home, but we had fun. I wouldn't trade these winter nights with them for anything. As I often do on my drives home, I thought about the history of the gym and what it would have been like to watch a game there in the 70s when the place was full and those old bleachers were rocking (they rocked a little when I walked on them, but that was more due to the fact that they're half a century old now). I thought about how an athletic director will make the decision at some point to take those old bleachers out, either because they fall too far into disrepair, or because some misguided people in leadership think that they need something flashier. I'm thankful I made it before that happens. I've learned a lot about the Greensburg Pirates over the last year, and I'm better for it. They hold a proud place in Indiana basketball history, one that so many people in the community past and present have been a part of. Visiting their classic venue was a perfect way to end another great regular season of hoops.
