Wabash (2,650) Built 1969
November 15, 2025: Marion vs. Wabash (Girls)
November 15, 2025: Marion vs. Wabash (Girls)
Have you ever showed up to an event of some sort, looked around, and asked yourself, Am I in the right place? Like whatever you thought was going to be at or happening at your destination, definitely was not? I found myself in this precise predicament when I walked into Wabash High School on a warm November evening last week. I was pretty sure I was in the right place. The sign said Wabash outside. Another sign inside said Coolman Gymnasium which I knew was the correct moniker. Something was missing though, and that something just happened to be a 40+ foot brick wall running along one of the sidelines. When I looked at pictures online beforehand, it seemed clear that the gym had one short section of bleachers along one sideline with a solid brick wall directly behind it. On the other side it looked like there was a classic bi-level setup. What I found was a gym with upper and lower levels along both sidelines. I was very confused. I sent a message to fellow gym historian Greg Alexander, whose wonderful Flickr site is where I found one of the pictures I saw beforehand which showed the gym only having one upper level. You can see it HERE. He told that me that a few years back the gym underwent a major renovation to add more seating that was desperately needed. The majority of the sideline wall shown in the picture was completely torn out, and an upper level was built in behind it. I'm not sure I can think of any other renovations like this in the last 30 years to add more seating in a gym. In most cases, remodels mean less seating. While the Apache mural that used to glare down menacingly at the court from above looks pretty cool in the old picture, it's refreshing to see a school actually want to raise the seating capacity when many places won't even roll out all of their bleachers for games these days.
The Wabash Apaches have had a long record of postseason success at the sectional level. Being the big host school for many years in the one class era, they brought home quite a few titles. They were able to turn those into regional championships on three occasions, plus one in the class era. For about 15 of those years, they played in a neat gym down by the river that is now the Honeywell Center Performing Arts Venue which you can see in the Fading Gyms section of this blog. The Coolman Gymnasium was built in 1969 and they've been playing here ever since. You enter the gym from a corner facing the side where the big wall used to be. Looking at it now, there are 7 rows of retractable bleachers leading up to a wall that rises up another five feet before it reaches the floor of the second level. These bleachers are plastic, with brown on the sides and black on the top. They look a little weird. The new second level that was created with the renovation features 14 rows of brand spanking new black plastic bleachers. They look a lot better than the older ones in the rest of the gym, but that isn't saying much. Another benefit of the remodel was that it created a little press box in one corner of the new second level where it looked like a radio broadcast was being produced. The opposing sideline section is the one that has always been there. The lower level has 10 rows of retractable seating, and the upper level has 15. The seats match the older ones on the opposite side.
One thing I always find attractive in gyms that have two levels is when there are racing stripes that run along the walls that follow the rise and fall of the stairs in the gym. You can find those here in orange and black all the way around the gym. The baselines here feature 5 rows of bleachers on the floor level. On the baseline wall by the main entrance to the gym are your typical vinyl pennants that feature athletic accomplishments for each sport. They're boring, but the sharp black and orange color scheme helps. A small Three Rivers Conference display is hidden up in one corner of this wall as well. The opposing baseline wall features a few more of the athletic accomplishment pennants right next to a big modern scoreboard which caught my eye for a reason that drives me absolutely nuts. The scoreboard features the panels that are supposed to tell you how many fouls and points each player currently on the floor has. That section was turned inexplicably off. If you are going to spend the money to put a really nice scoreboard in that features valuable information for the fans, why on earth would you not use it?! It's like buying a convertible and leaving the roof up while you're driving down the California coast on a sunny day. It makes no sense (EDIT: I'm going to leave this last section in as a reminder to myself to pay attention to my surroundings. It turns out that Wabash does in fact use that section of the scoreboard, and even did so the night I was there! I just happened to notice and take pictures of it before lineups were announced for the varsity game and they were put on the board. For as much time as I spend looking around at gyms, you'd think I'd be more observant throughout the game).
To the left of the silly scoreboard is a nice track and field record display right above a panel with the names of all the 1,000 point scorers in the school's history. These should be standard in every gym. The playing floor in Coolman Gymnasium is definitely one of the highlights. It features a light golden color throughout most of it, while the top of the key and interior wing areas are painted orange. The top of the key area is also painted with black lines to make it look like a basketball. This is something that was cool when I was a kid, and I still love it today. "Wabash" is written across each baseline in slightly fancy black script. "TRC" is written right inside each sideline. You don't often see conference names displayed in that position on the floor. At center court is the big Apache logo which I think looks fantastic. I hope the floor design does not get modernized soon, it's really good.
This was one of those Friday nights where there wasn't a specific game that caught my eye, so I looked at all the gyms in a radius I was willing to drive to, and used John Harrell's score predictions on his site to help me choose a game that would hopefully be close. Marion took an early lead in this one and never really looked back, but it didn't take away from the experience. The reality of going to games this year is that both my 5 and 3 year old sons are with me at almost all of them. I used to be able to put the youngest one down for bed a little early on game nights and sneak away to anywhere within an hour and still make it almost by tip-off. With a newish baby in the fold now and boys that are older and not as receptive to early bedtimes, that's not really possible anymore. I wasn't sure how it was going to change things, as in the past when one of them did come, it was almost always just one or the other, not both. So far it's been great. With each passing year they become more and more engaged in actually watching the action. You'll definitely still see them driving their cars around the bleachers at times (the remodel here at Wabash definitely helped in this regard, they had plenty of space up at the top), but they'll also ask me who's winning, who I'm cheering for, and when are we getting popcorn? They know I like to take pictures, even if they don't really understand why. It's been fun. I never have to convince them to come, they look forward to it all week. That will probably change at some point, but for now I'm soaking these nights in. So if you see a guy weirdly taking pictures of the gym walls while two little kids trail behind with a Paw Patrol backpack, come say hi! I love connecting with people on this Hoosier Gym Journey.
