Lawrence Central (3,400) Built 2008
January 27, 2024: Anderson vs. Lawrence Central (Boys)
January 27, 2024: Anderson vs. Lawrence Central (Boys)
When I was about 13, I went with my mom on a road trip down the old Route 66 highway. We started in northern Illinois and ended up in St. Louis. I remember thinking at the time that St. Louis seemed like a pretty unremarkable city. There wasn't really anything that jumped out to me, and the best parts of the trip were everything leading up to that point. Then right before we left, we saw the St. Louis Arch. Talk about a statement piece. While there wasn't all that much drawing my eye otherwise, that one focal point was enough to make me stop and stare. This memory is weirdly what was in my mind as I drove home from Lawrence Central after their barnburner of a game against Anderson. The gym was built in 2008, and you can tell. Gyms from this era have the personality of a Q-tip. There just isn't much to write home about in totality, but man, it has that upper section on the home side of the gym. It just goes up, and up, and up. A true wonder to behold.
Lawrence Central has a bleacher set up that isn't totally unique, but it's not very common. It only has bleachers along the two sidelines. The section behind the team benches and scorer's table is one large section of about 25 rows of bleachers going straight up. It's pretty tall in it's own right. The other side does not mirror it at all. It has two levels. The lower one has 15 rows until it reaches the dividers. In the upper section, I counted 27 rows of bleachers. That is 42 rows that seemingly never stop climbing towards the rafters. I sat near the top on the side behind the benches, and I couldn't even begin to see the top of the other side. At halftime I ventured over there and made my way to the very top. When I turned around, my mind was boggled by what I saw. There is a single scoreboard perched in the rafters facing only the spectators in that very top section, because they are so high up that their view of the normal, lower two scoreboards is completely cut off. It's absurd, but it's actually necessary! You can see the action from up there, but you better have a strong knowledge of the player profiles on each team because you aren't going to be making out any of the numbers from that crow's nest. It's high enough that they're able to have an extra hardwood practice court in the upper deck when the bleachers are rolled up. Ridiculous. The bleachers themselves are all the newer wooden kind. They're shiny and look nice. My only gripe is like with many remodels and new gyms, they added so many rows of steps amongst the bleachers that it looks kind of dumb. This seems to be a staple of newer gyms in the Indy area.
Aside from that magnificent section of stands, the rest of the gym feels like some sort of corporate warehouse. One baseline wall is bare other than some extremely bland and hard to see athletic accomplishment banners. The opposite baseline wall has some Indiana state-shaped displays honoring past state champion and runner up teams. I'm seeing these more often with bigger schools, and while I don't hate them, they're very generic and often times hard to read because it all blends together. Underneath are some standard, white jersey displays honoring past Indiana All-Stars. I will say the court design is pretty cool with a big, bold, bear head at center court. That's a nice centerpiece. Out in the lobby is a neat hanging conference team exhibit. While I always believe conference teams should be displayed somewhere in the gym, this was unique. You can also find the old center court bear emblem framed out there, which does look cool, but it's pretty much a direct ripoff of the old Chicago Bears logo. I hate when high schools do that.
I would be very curious to see pictures of what the old Lawrence Central gym looked like. I wonder what the need for a huge, new gym was when they never come close to filling this one anyways. While the new gym does have one massive, redeeming element to it, it just feels like a lot of the life has been sucked out of it. The security presence was also overbearing to the point they were doing everything possible to keep opposing fans from even walking past each other. I felt like I was doing something illegal when I slipped over to the opposing side to take a few pictures of the court and check out the view from the skybox. The game itself was awesome, but the whole experience, much like the gym, felt sanitized. I think everyone should come to see the Hoosier Hysteria version of Jacob's Ladder, but don't expect much else.
