Wapahani (1,725) Built 1967
January 31, 2025: Delta vs. Wapahani (Boys)
January 31, 2025: Delta vs. Wapahani (Boys)
I try not to let the game night environment of a place influence my rankings and opinions very much. I don't want to ding a gym just because there are two below .500 teams playing against each other on a random Tuesday night in January. I feel like I've done a pretty good job of not letting a place with no ambience negatively impact my views. This is Hoosier Gym Journey, not Hoosier Atmosphere Journey. I still have a hard time with the opposite scenario though. When I visit a place that is full and rocking for a big game, it's hard not to view it through rose-colored glasses. This was the case last Friday night at Wapahani. They've been the top team in 2A for most of the year and were playing a tough Delta team that plays exceptionally well together. The minute I stepped in the door and couldn't move because the hall was filled wall to wall with people, I knew I was in for a good one. Both sides of the gym were full of people top to bottom. They were selling ice cream for a couple dollars, there was a 50/50 raffle, some kind of winter homecoming was going on, it was clearly the place to be. The pregame introductions incorporated dozens of elementary kids and by tipoff it felt like the roof was going to come off the place. It may have been the best game night atmosphere I've experienced all year, and I was literally at the Buggy Bowl just last week. All of this to say, I'm going to try and analyze the gym objectively the best that I can. Luckily it has enough bright spots on its own that don't have to do with the raucous crowd.
Wapahani's gym falls into a category that so many schools who were the product of consolidation in the 60s do. It's a two-level multipurpose gym that seats right around 2,000 and has a lot of elements that feel both old and new. The seating is only along the sidelines. There are about 7 rows on the bottom level and about 10 on the top (it was so crowded that it was really hard to count, that's a great problem to have!). The bleachers are plastic and a dark-maroon color. This is only notable because nowhere else in the gym can I find that same maroon color. Everywhere else it is red, black, white, and even a little grey. I'm not sure why they didn't opt for red bleachers or even black (which is always the right choice if you're rolling with plastic bleachers). When the bleachers are full though you don't really notice! The walls above the upper bleachers have "Raiders" written across them in big red letters against an all black backdrop. It's similar to what I found at Blackford earlier in the week. It looks fine, and they thankfully didn't slap a generic logo beside it in every corner of the gym like Blackford did. On the side walls up here you'll find a red strip that runs over and down following the slope of the bleachers to the floor level and back up the other side. Accents like this always help pull the design of the whole gym together.
The hardwood floor is the most modern thing in the entire gym, and while I love classic floor designs, they did a pretty good job here. It's a two-toned court with most of the floor featuring a light-gold color and the interior wing areas featuring a slightly darker shade of brown. There's a huge black "W" at center court with a Raider chief logo overlaid on it. It looks pretty sweet. "Raiders" is written right inside each sideline, and "Wapahani" is written in white against a black perimeter along the baselines. For a gym built in the 60s, there is not much space between the out of bounds lines and the baseline walls. The wall above the entry to the gym is fairly basic. There are white athletic accomplishment banners that are neat and tidy and can be read from across the gym. They don't look old, but they're not the same sterile kind you find so many places now. Black padding runs across the base of the wall with a couple red "W's on it which adds to the cohesion of the overall color scheme.
The opposite baseline wall is what really shines. It's one of the most efficient and effective uses of a big wall space I've seen in any gym I've been to. Let's look at it from left to right. The first thing you see is a small display honoring the two schools (Selma BlueBirds and Center Spartans) that came together to form Wapahani in 1967. It's a little small, but I'm glad its there when many schools don't acknowledge there history in this way at all. Next to that is a conference team display that isn't my favorite, but it is unique. Each Mid-Eastern conference team is shown in a grid pattern with the first letter in the name of the school displayed with their mascot name running over it. The school colors are modestly shown in an odd gradient style on the big letter for each school. Right in the center of the wall are two rows of state championship banners that have the rosters listed for each team which is a really nice touch. It makes them way more personal and meaningful. On the far right of this wall is probably my favorite feature of the whole gym, which is a big square mural of a Wapahani Raider chief with a full headdress. It also has a cool "W" logo and "Raiders" written in a menacing font below it. I hope they never paint over or remove it for something more modern like I've seen in other remodeled gyms recently.
When I got home from the game, I did a little more research on John Harrell's site (which if you're reading this and have never checked it out, do yourself a favor and hop on it. If you love Indiana high school basketball it will change your life) about Wapahani's recent basketball history. I knew they've had some good teams recently, but I didn't realize just how dominant the Coach Matt Luce era as been. They haven't had a losing season since 2007. In the last 17 years they've had 5 twenty win seasons, 6 sectionals, 2 regionals, and a semistate title to boot. We can argue for days about what schools should do to try and improve attendance in this age of endless entertainment options, but at the end of the day the best cure for an apathetic fan base is an awesome team. Wapahani has had one for a decade and a half now, and this year is one of the best they've had in that entire run. It was really neat to see the gym on a night when the whole community was out in full force. It may not be the most well known gym in the area, but it's a mighty fine place to watch a great team on a cold Indiana Friday night.
