Manchester (2,396) Built 1960
February 23, 2024: Mississinewa vs. Manchester (Boys)
February 23, 2024: Mississinewa vs. Manchester (Boys)
As I've mentioned before, I try to keep the effect that gamenight atmosphere has on my rankings when I'm looking at different gyms to a minimum. I want to be able to evaluate the gym itself, and atmospheres can be very fickle depending on the night of the week, strength/distance of the opponent, or if the home team is having a down year. It's impossible not to let it creep in a little bit though. The gamenight atmosphere at Manchester hit me like a Mack truck on their senior night against Mississinewa. In a throwback to a bygone era, the PA annoucer asks everyone to stand while the pep band plays both team's school songs. That's very rare these days. Lots of schools turn off the lights when announcing the home team's starting lineups, but few have the entire student section come out and form a tunnel for the starters to run through as they're announced while shining phone lights everywhere making it feel like a South Beach club. We can also talk about the student sections themselves. Yes, there are two. Along one baseline you have the high schoolers, along the other the middle schoolers. Both of them large in number, organized in cheers, and loud. Hands down the best performance I've seen all year at any school. I was fired up and I didn't have a dog in the fight. We're off to a great start, and I haven't even mentioned the gym itself yet.
There's a banner hanging in the gym indicating that Manchester is one of the original 15 founding members of the IHSAA (when it was North Manchester). I don't usually love seeing the IHSAA signage in gyms because it's usually pretty bland and they're kind of like the evil empire in high school basketball, but this is pretty cool. It made me immediately wonder who the other 15 are and if they have the same banner. Anyways, it goes to show how deep the hoops heritage runs at the school. This is very evident in the gym. The gym itself actually went through an extensive renovation in 2001 to increase seating and floor space. They removed a big stage along the sideline opposite of the stadium seating section. Now I'm never going to advocate for removing a stage, especially one along a baseline which is incredibly unique. I didn't see it in person so my opinion may not hold much weight here, but it doesn't feel like a ton of character was lost in the process. There are now about 12 rows of red plastic bleachers where the stage used to be, now behind the team benches. My only gripe with this side of the gym is that the first row of bleachers starts about 15 feet behind the team benches. It just feels so far away from the action, and the lower you are towards the court, the worse it is. There's also a rope all the way across the first row of the bleachers separating them from the scorer's table area and team benches, which just feels unnecessary and pretentious.
If your ears perked up when I mentioned stadium seating in the paragraph above, that was my exact reaction when I first heard about Manchester and then looked up pictures. Since the gym was built in 1960, there have been 13 rows of stadium seating on the home side of the bleachers. They've been replaced with new seats since the inception of the gym, but no charm has been lost. I'm not even sure I would prefer to sit in stadium seats for a whole game over bleachers simply due to my long legs, but man do they look cool! It makes everything that happens on the court feel like some kind of grand spectacle. Above those stadium seats is a second level with normal plastic bleachers. There's about 12 rows, and while the tops of the bleachers are red, the part that wraps around underneath is white. They look very different when viewed from the other side of the gym. In the middle, at the very top of this section, is an elevated platform jutting out from the wall that presumably was designed for filming the game, but on this night was merely used for kids to climb on and underneath. There are also two really small sections of bleachers along each baseline wall for the two student sections we talked about earlier. They have black bleachers instead of red.
The Manchester mascot is a "squire." When I think of a squire, my mind goes to a European peasant in the Dark Ages, I could be way off base there, but regardless it's original which is always a plus. There's a large mural of their interpretation of it along the baseline wall where you enter the gym. Right beside it is "Manchester Squires" in big block lettering. There is also a simple tribute to the other three schools that consolidated with North Manchester in the late 50's (Laketon Tigers, Chester Panthers, Central Trojans). Above all of this are some very generic and modern athletic accomplishment banners that you can barely read. Above one doorway to the hallway is a cool plaque with a bunch of school records for the girls program. What's weird is there's nothing like it anywhere that I could find for the boys program. The opposing baseline wall has more of the athletic accomplishment banners, but the centerpiece is a giant mural with "The Jungle" painted above the student section. The detail in the art around the lettering is really cool. One of my favorite mural pieces I've seen. In one corner of the gym, almost like it's trying to hide, is a big framed section of the old hardwood floor. It has the center court logo on display which is a big squire that matches the one still on the wall.
The new playing surface is really well done. It's a gorgeous mix of two-tone brown and Manchester red. The red band around the perimeter frames it nicely. There's a giant "M" at centercourt that's simple but ties it all together. I wouldn't really change anything about it. One final unique feature is the not one, but two different conference team displays in the gym. I'm partial to the smaller one that hangs on the wall that shows the location of each team on the state map. They also have newer, more basic banners hanging from the ceiling in a very similar vein to what you will find at Anderson. They're nothing special, but they're big and colorful at least. They hang horizontally above the sideline seats which is a little different. Finally, there are tiny doors on the side of the stadium seating sections that I assume are just used for storage, but I'll choose to believe they have a little more magical purpose.
Per Dale Lawrence's excellent Hoosier Hysteria Road Book, Manchester didn't have a losing season in the program's first THIRTY-NINE seasons. No wonder the spirit of the sport has persisted here. Everything here feels homegrown and rooted in community support. The concession stand is literally just the high school cafeteria kitchen. I don't know why, but that even that added to the experience for me. One of my favorite parts of this whole journey is traveling on new roads to different schools as I visit them for the first time. The drive from Wabash to Manchester was one of my favorites. Farms and fields spread out along communities that may not even have a stop sign to their name anymore. As the regular season comes to an end, much like of the people of Manchester for their basketball team, I'm just grateful. Grateful for Indiana and everything that comes with it.
