Jeffersonville (Fieldhouse) (5,650) Built 1937
October 17, 2025
Lately I've been thinking a lot about the value of things. What do we value? Why do we value it? What things can you ascribe a monetary value to and what is considered priceless? Most of the time we probably think of familial and spiritual things as priceless, and physical and material things as having an exact value. As someone who holds some historical things in an extremely high regard, I have a hard time with this occasionally. There are some material things that I guess I consider priceless. If you read my blog, you would rightly assume that some of those material things are gyms. Many old gyms were the lifeblood and hubs of entire communities. When they ceased to hold the events that unified the whole town, the town often quite literally died out. They are symbols of community pride and the threads that hold us together as a society. Maybe that line of thinking is too flowery or idealistic for some, but I've personally seen it too much to think otherwise. I've seen grown men come to tears when talking about what these gyms, basketball teams, and schools meant to people back then, and what they still mean to them now. To me, you can't put a price on that. As I've been pondering all this though lately, I've come to the stark realization that sometimes you have to try to put a price tag on them in order for them to survive.
I think one of the greatest gifts my parents gave me growing up was that I never really thought about money, at least in the sense that I never worried about it. Both of my parents were teachers, so we sat about as firmly in the middle class as you can get. They taught me to manage money wisely, and I knew they did themselves, but I never really thought about not having enough or having an excess of it. I think this was a gift because it led to a fairly carefree childhood. As an adult, I find myself thinking about money all the time, and I hate it. Unless you have just oodles of it, you can't really function as an adult without thinking about it. This last weekend I drove up to Gary to watch a sectional game and stopped at a bunch of faded gyms along the way. Greene Township in St. Joe County was one I had to get to because it's probably going to be demolished before long. Before I left, I read an article about it from about a decade ago when the school closed. So many people were quoted in the story talking about how much the school, building, and gym meant to them. It's a tale as old as time. I sat in my car staring at this physical building thinking about how they couldn't tear it down, and what it would take to save it. The answer of course was money. The next question was as always, how much? And, where is that money coming from? Most often the answers with old gyms are: too much, and nowhere. Sometimes I daydream about what I would do if I won the lottery. What gyms would I buy and fix up first? I think of Shields Gym in Seymour and get mad at my favorite musician John Mellencamp for not writing a big check and saving a historical landmark in his hometown (I'm really good at theoretically spending other people's money). When towns or organizations are actually able to make it happen, it feels like a miracle. One of those miracles happened a few years ago in Jeffersonville, and when I got to see it firsthand in the fall, it moved me.
Jeffersonville is primarily known in the high school basketball world for their rivalry with New Albany. The two cities are so close together that somone like me who isn't from the area has a hard time telling where one stops and the other begins. If Barr-Reeve/North Daviess is the best small school rivalry we have, this is easily the best big school rivalry we have. The schools are up near the top in terms of which two schools have played each other the most times since the first state tournament back in 1911. Many of those famous battles were played in one of the most gorgeous venues we have, Nachand Fieldhouse. Named after a former parks department director, Nachand Fieldhouse was home to the Jeffersonville Red Devils from 1937-1971. I'm not going to try and count up all the sectional and regional titles they won during that time span, but it's a lot. I first learned about the Fieldhouse in Kyle Neddenriep's Historic Hoosier Gyms and became intrigued by what looked like the wraparound balcony, but I got even more excited when I saw a couple more pictures online. It looked big, it looked unique, and I couldn't figure out why I hadn't heard more about it. I just knew I wanted to go see it soon. It took me longer than I wanted to, but I finally was able to make it happen back in October. I genuinely wasn't ready for what I found.
Around 2016, the Fieldhouse was facing a pretty uncertain future. It had been run by the Jeffersonville Parks Department for years as a recreation facility. After 80 years of use though, it needed a lot of TLC. Through a variety of avenues, they were able to come up with the money and do some pretty extensive repairs and refurbishments. What's incredible is that you would really have no idea. It's in great shape, but they've also done an amazing job of keeping all the elements in place that made it so special when it was regularly hosting big high school games. They've even enhanced the historical feel by hanging momentos from Jeffersonville's past all over the gym which we will get to later. For now let's jump into the description. The best way I can describe the overall feel of Nachand Fieldhouse, is a miniature Hinkle Fieldhouse. People may completely disagree with me and that's fine, but it's just the vibe I got from the place. It's the long and seemingly neverending ramps that you take to the upper balcony. It's the lower level seats that (used to) lead almost all the way to the upper deck. It's the deep balcony that surrounds the court on all four sides. It took me back to Hoosiers. It took me to back to reading about all the legendary state finals games that were played at Hinkle. Jeffersonville hosted numerous sectional and regional games here, so that feeling of importance and the weight of hosting big games was very evident.
Ms. Sara Nord, who is a Jeffersonville legend and Ms. Basketball winner from 2000, now runs the Fieldhouse. She was kind enough to let me in and have the run of the place to take pictures. There are four different sets of long sloping ramps that take you up to the top of the building. I went up there first. The balcony here is what grabbed my attention from the get-go. It's honestly hard to put into words. Along the sidelines up here are 8 rows of permanent wooden bleachers. All the bleachers up in the balcony have red bench seats with everything else being grey except for the little red rises the benches sit on. The seats along the sidelines taper off a bit in the corners. There are seats in the corners as well, but not in the traditional rounded way you usually see in gyms with wraparound seating. Each corner has a little ledge built out running perpendicular to the sideline seats. They're only accessible via the top row of the sidelines bleachers. On each of those ledges are three more rows of seating. In front of the first row on each is about a 12 foot wall that drops down to the narrow walkway below above the baselines, which immediately drops all the way down to playing floor. The only thing keeping you up there is a single rail and your own volition. Standing on that ledge in front of the rail was the most nervous I've been in a gym. I don't do heights. I was literally shaking. I can't imagine sitting up there in a packed gym with everyone jostling around you. Wedged inbetween these ledges in the middle of each upper baseline section are 5 more rows of permanent bleachers. They certainly feel steeper than the others. Walking around the upper level, there are some phenomenal views of the court, and then some other seats with some pretty long sightlines. Regardless, the upper level here is unlike anything I've ever experienced in a high school gym. It's so cool.
The very upper walls of the gym are lined with windows that thankfully haven't been blocked in. Right underneath them on one side are some old signs honoring past state championship teams and Sara Nord herself. They are vintage and add a nice touch of nostalgia. They've done a great job of that everywhere. Jeffersonville memorabilia lines the walls of the upper deck. Jerseys, letter jackets, pictures, old schedules, you can find it all here. They even have some memorabilia from other small area schools that have long been lost to consolidation but used to play in the Jeffersonville sectional here. It's really cool of them to pay tribute in that way. The Fieldhouse meant a lot to all who remember coming to the legendary sectional games here, even those from opposing schools. They even honor these schools further with banners hanging on the bannisters all the way around the gym on the balcony. There is also a red and white sign hanging right underneath the same bannister that reads "Welcome to the Fieldhouse." It just adds to the aura of the place.
This is probably a good place to talk about the one big way the Fieldhouse has changed since the 70s. If you've been perusing the pictures, you can probably already guess it. Today, along one lower sideline is another almost full length basketball court. Along the other sideline is a big area with tables and chairs set up and some rooms that have been built out towards the main court. Obviously this was not the original setup in the gym. There used to be rows and rows of more permanent wooden bleachers that reached up right underneath the second level. This place was packed floor to ceiling with seats at one point. It's not too hard to imagine what it would have looked like (again I'm thinking of Hinkle), but it would be nice to have some good pictures to give a visual. With a gym this iconic, you would think they'd be easy to find, apparently not! I've searched everywhere online and found nothing, and I've reached out to people in the community which hasn't yielded anything either. The best image I've been able to find of what the place looked like with bleachers is from a picture hanging on the wall in the gym itself. It looked even more incredible than I imagined. There used to be lower windows under the upper level, which made the balcony look like it was suspended in midair without being attached to anything. It's one of the coolest pictures I've seen of any gym ever, and it makes me want to hop in a DeLorean and travel back in time to see it for myself so bad. Alas. Last but not certainy least, is the gym floor. It's worn, and has a perfect golden gleam to it. At center court "Nachand Fieldhouse" is written in curved font around the iconic Jeffersonville "J" in the little jump circle. It's splendid.
As you can see from how high I'm probably going to rank this gym, there's hardly anything I would ever change about it. It's immaculate in every way. Clearly the people who renovated it (I'm not sure you can even all it a renovation with how much they were able to keep the original character of the place intact) felt the same way. You can feel how much they valued it in the way they paid attention to every painstaking detail. The hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been poured into it over the last decade are evidence of it as well. I wish it was possible to have the former without the latter when it comes to restoring and preserving these places. If it was, I probably wouldn't be currently working on identifying where 600+ old gyms that are now long gone once stood. But that's not reality. You can't fix HVAC systems, patch leaky roofs, and fortify foundations with fond memories. You need real dollars unfortunately. Thankfully the fine people of Jeffersonville found some and put them to good use. Nachand Fieldhouse is a treasure that sits in the hearts of so many people who have walked through its doors over the last 8 decades. At least that's something you can't put a price tag on.
