Marion (Coliseum) (5,500) Built 1928
July 17, 2024
July 17, 2024
Growing up there were a lot of expressions I heard thrown around by adults that I didn't really understand. I remember hearing "kill two birds with one stone" and just thinking about it forever walking around my grandpa's farm and not being able to figure it out. One expression that I did understand though at a very young age was "you have to squint to see it." I got glasses and contacts in the 4th grade, and I remember putting them on for the first time and it feeling like a whole new world had opened up. I never knew how bad my eyesight truly was (and still is) until I saw what everyone else was able to see. If I took my glasses off and tried to squint to see something at a distance I could make out the general figure, but it wasn't nearly as sharp of an image as it was with the glasses on. I felt a little bit of this when I stepped into the old Marion Coliseum this week for the first time. It's a building I drove by hundreds of times in college and always admired but never stepped foot in. It's now the Grant County YMCA. It used to be the home of one of the most storied basketball programs in the state of Indiana. It's received a modern facelift over the years, but you can still sense the history in the air. You just have to squint to see it.
The Coliseum was built in 1928 and hosted Marion Giant games until 1970. By my count they hosted 42 sectionals and won 31 of them. Many of those years they made deeper runs. It wasn't until they left the building that they went on their stretch of 7 state championships (they also had one prior to playing here), but it was a very successful era nonetheless. A purple banner hangs in one corner of the gym honoring these accomplishments along with some NCC championships which were won in the toughest conference in the state during its most competitive era. Looking straight ahead at the opposing baseline wall when you enter the gym, you see the portion of the gym that looks the most untouched by renovations. There is a large stage with a heavy blue curtain hanging across it. The stage was used for a variety of things by the school over the years along with the famous Marion Easter Pageant that is still put on every spring. The bottom portion of the stage is framed by a mahogany wood base and white painted border around the sides and top. It looks very regal. Adding to the stately aura are two seating boxes sitting halfway up each side of the stage. They look as if they were taken straight out of an opera house. It's unclear how one is supposed to access them, but they look really neat. Slightly above these and to the side are large wooded grates that conceal the entrance to something behind. I later found out that behind these sits a 22 ton pipe organ that utilizes over 2,000 pipes! It is as old as the gym itself. How cool is that?
The rest of the gym has maintained the general form and structure that it had originally, but most of it has been updated. Initially the gym had permanent seating along an upper level that stretched the length of both sidelines and the baseline above the entrance to the gym. Underneath that level was about 8 rows of additional seating on the sidelines and a few more along the baseline by the entrance. The upper level seating on the east baseline has been completely removed, and there is now just one section of plastic theater seats that go about 8 rows high. It appears they moved the back wall closer to the court when they added onto the building behind it on that side. Looking at this side of the gym is where you have to use your imagination to invision what it used to look like. The opposite sideline section looks much more like it did nearly a century ago. There are still two levels. The lower has 8 rows of blue plastic retractable bleachers. The upper level still has the original permanent wooden seating that is painted a shade of ocean green. It looks awesome. At the very top of this wall are the original windows as well. They also left the hanging signs indicating the letters of each seating section which is cool. There are still also some giant support beams running from floor to ceiling that partially obstruct the view of fans in this upper section. Not great if you're trying to watch a game, but it definitely adds some character.
The upper section above the entrance to the gym on the baseline has a few rows of retractable bleachers that match the lower level instead of the original permanent seating. There are is a long stairwell leading down to the lower level in this area as well. There is no longer any seating behind the baseline by the entrance. The court itself isn't notable at this point. There's a generic YMCA logo at center court. They've thankfully preserved the classic Marion center court piece from the old floor and it is framed beautifully on the wall. There is a short track around the perimeter of the playing floor which believe it or not was actually there before the renovations though I'm guessing it was not as vibrant as the current one.
I'll be honest in that I don't really have hard and fast rules for which old gyms still qualify to be ranked and which don't when I'm visiting them for the first time and they look much different than they did when they were actively hosting high school games. The ones that are completely falling to pieces don't make the cut, and neither do the ones that have been altered so much to the point that they are unrecognizable. The Marion Coliseum lives a bit in the grey area, but I think it counts because it is still actively used as a gym, the general form and structure of it is the same as when it was built, and there are still some really cool elements present that date back to when the gym was constructed. Your can still get a real feel for what it must have been like in the glory days when you step inside it almost 100 years after its inception. That's the power of these gyms. They can truly transport you to a time and place where everything about the game just mattered a little bit more.
