Reynolds (556) Built 1940
May 20, 2025
May 20, 2025
This spring I took on the laborious task of researching every single high school that ever participated in the IHSAA boys basketball tournament to see if its gym was still standing. Using John Harrell's indispensible website, I learned there have been upwards of 1,100 schools that have been a part of the beautiful mosaic that is Hoosier Hysteria. Some have very detailed histories laid out online that can quickly inform me of whether a gym still exists or not, others have no digital footprint whatsoever, and some have just bits and pieces of clues that I have to try to fit together. Often the most useful strategy I've found is just using Google Maps to scour these small towns (or sometimes just crossroads) to see if I can find anything that resembles an old gym from above (it's remarkable how good I've become at spotting them this way if I do say so myself). Doing this has allowed me to unearth some gyms I've never seen written about or documented anywhere else. Hazleton, Reelsville, and Montmorenci are just a few that come to mind. A few weeks ago I had the chance to visit one of the first that I stumbled across during this process. While I was overjoyed when I was able to confirm that a small community in White County still maintained their gym, I wasn't expecting much as I couldn't find a single photo of it anywhere. When I walked into this 85 year old treasure though, I was more than pleasantly surprised.
The Reynolds gym is one of the few members of the 1940s club. The World War II era was understandably not ripe with new gym construction. The exterior design isn't one that fits a particular time period. It reminds me a little of the Bosstick Gym in Danville, but even that's a bit of a stretch. The gym was the home of the Reynolds Rangers (fantastic name) for 23 years until they consolidated into North White. They weren't able to capture a sectional title during that time, but at least they had a fantastic place to call home. After the high school closed, the gym served the attached elementary school until 2012 when it also closed its doors. It is now used by the community for a variety of events, and the adjoined school is home to various town/township offices. For a place that has changed hands many times, it is in remarkably good condition. It also maintains a decent vintage feel which often isn't the case when a gym has been taken over by an elementary school for a couple of decades. The main reason for this is due to the feature I always tend to gravitate to first in every gym: the bleachers.
Each sideline here has seven rows of gorgeous permanent wooden bleachers that are stained a rich, medium-dark brown. They're the kind that utilize big platforms for each row and then put the bench seats up on little three inch risers. This style always just looks cool to me. The bleachers are well-loved and well-worn in many different spots. I wouldn't change a thing about them. Permanent bleachers so often get torn out when gyms are "elementarized," and I'm so glad that didn't happen here. The original scorer's table is also intact here which matches the color of the bleachers. There are even old-timey signs that indicate precisely where the scorer and timer would sit. It all looks awesome. The bleachers span the whole length of the court on one side, while the other is cut short by a storage room that must have been added in at some point. It's not big enough to really take away from the effect of the orginal bleachers being intact. They were actually really thoughtful with how they used the space on the wall of the room. Between the two doors is a wonderful outlined mural of White County with all the original county schools and their mascots painted roughly where they would be geographically. Anyone who follows this blog knows I eat this kind of stuff up. Above the storage room is a landing where three banners hang honoring past teams that won the White County Tourney championship. A county title back in those days meant almost as much as a sectional. Just another fantastic nod to the past and tradition of the Reynolds Rangers.
Amazingly, the county school mural might not be the best one in the gym. High up on one baseline wall you'll find a ranger riding a bucking bronco breaking through the cinder block wall into the gym. The lasso the cowboy is wielding masterfully spells out "Reynolds," while "Rangers" is painted in blue right beneath it accompanied by a lawman's badge. It looks like something out of the 70s so it doesn't date back to the high school basketball days of the gym, but I don't even care. I love it. This wall is otherwise bare except for the blue and yellow racing stripes that traverse the entire gym about halfway up the wall. The upper sideline walls are also relatively unadorned, though one does have a few tall vertical windows. The opposite baseline wall features a stage that you could describe as plain, but it fits the vibe of the rest of the gym perfectly. It isn't framed by any type of fancy trim around the outside, and the bottom wood piece that functions as the floor of the stage is weathered from years of use. A royal blue curtain hangs proudly across it. It's unassuming, yet fits just right. The hardwood floor is stained a dark golden brown color with the classic double circle at center court.
There are other little pieces of history in and around the gym that further tell its story. Behind the curtain on the stage is a worn floor along with the original locker rooms. If you enter the gym from within the school, you'll pass a little section on the concrete wall where past students have signed their names. It's a cool little monument to Ranger alumni. The original foyer area to the gym houses a small display case with an old letter jacket, license plate, and cheerleading megaphone among other things. My guide for the visit was Mrs. Sharon Brooks who is the Honey Creek Township Trustee. She showed me some more memorabilia before I left which included newspaper clippings from January of 1954 when a Ranger basketball player collapsed during a game and passed away in the gym of a heart attack. It was a very real reminder of the history that played out in these old gyms. They weren't just home to heroic victories, but also to real people who lived out their lives in these communities, for better or worse. It shook the warm nostalgic feelings out of me a bit.
My stop in Reynolds was in the middle of a day trip that was taking me out through a midwestern part of the state I'd never really been in before. I started in Medaryville and would end the day in Raub, within spitting distance of the Illinois state line. As I drove away from Reynolds, I couldn't help but think about Jack Johnson who played center for the Rangers and died doing what he loved on that court 70 years ago. It was the same year as the Milan Miracle which brought the entire state to a fever pitch and was the absolute high water mark for Hoosier Hysteria in the state. I drove through the countryside on my way from Reynolds to Brook, gazing at every single farmhouse along the way, wondering about what it must have been like to live here in 1954. A simpler time surely, but one with very real struggles and hardships. I thought about the weight that the death of a local teenager must have had in a small community at that time. I wondered if it would hit as deeply today in the social media crazed world we live in, or if people would quickly move on to the next thing as we tend to do. It's honestly a scary and devastating thing to think about. Whether it's an unbelievable high like the Milan Indians winning the state championship, or an unfathomable tragedy, I just don't think we feel things as deeply in our communities anymore. Things in the real world just don't matter as much when so much of our lives are lived behind screens. This stuck with me for the rest of my ride. Maybe I'm being dramatic, or maybe these kinds of thoughts just come with getting older. Regardless, I won't soon forget the Reynolds gym, both for its beauty and the lessons it has taught the people who have walked through its doors for the last eight decades.
