Westfield (2,080) Built 1998
June 23, 2024: Indianapolis Cathedral vs. Anderson (Boys)
June 23, 2024: Indianapolis Cathedral vs. Anderson (Boys)
106 years is a really long time. A lot changes over the course of a century. My great-grandpa and his two siblings all lived to be 100 years or older, his brother all the way to 107. I remember talking to him in his 90s for a project at school about what life was like in the early 1900s and was just fascinated. It's one of the times I can think back on now and see where my love for history started, especially local and Indiana history. For that school project we also had to research the history of the townships in LaGrange County and I just loved putting together all the pieces and comparing what they looked like back then compared to what they looked like in the present. My love for these historical gyms and their traditions can be traced back to these little moments. 106 years also happens to be how long Westfield High School has had a boys basketball team. They started in 1918. The first ever IHSAA tournament began only 7 years earlier than that when Crawfordsville took home the first title. They've been a part of this since nearly the very beginning. With 106 different opportunities to make some noise in the grandest high school tournament on the planet, and as a fairly large school, you would think they'd have a little hardware to write home about. You would be wrong in that assumption! In 2022 they had the best player in the state in Braden Smith and won their FIRST EVER SECTIONAL. 106 years, 1 sectional title. This may the saddest "feat" in the history of Indiana high school basketball. The only thing that may be close to being as strange as this fact is the gym they play in.
If you look at the Westfield's gym from a wide, zoomed out angle, it looks pretty normal. There's two single sideline sections of bleachers that rise high above the playing floor seamingly uninterrupted. There's an indoor track that goes around the whole thing on a second level. Seems pretty standard right? Then you look a little closer and really think about I just described and it suddenly doesn't make sense. How can there be uninterruped sections of bleachers if there's two levels? Wouldn't an upper level track mean that there's a seperate set of bleachers up above? The answers here are just as confusing as the questions themselves. The sideline behind the scorer's table and benches is simple enough. There's one set of black and green plastic bleachers that goes up about 25 rows directly against a cement wall behind it. You can only access it from the floor level. The indoor track disappears and goes behind that wall into an area you can't see from the gym. The opposing sideline section is where things get very convoluted. It looks like one giant section of rollaway bleachers about 30 rows high. It is actually two separate sections, one on the floor level and one on the upper level that meet together in the middle to make a seamless transition. Instead of a partition of some sort and a walkway in front of the upper level like in so many other gyms, they just come together and the bleachers continue to rise. You would think that this middle area would be able to be accessed via the upper level track, but it's not. It's all fenced off and there's actually no way to access the track area from the gym area. This means you can't watch the game from above along the baselines or move from one side to the other that way. This slightly higher side also does not meet the back wall, but there is an area behind it that drops down to the track and an extra practice court. Again, it's very odd.
As unique as the general setup of the gym is, it doesn't quite make up for how bland and basic the rest of the aesthetic is. What's unfortunate is that everything was just recently redesigned, and this is all they could come up with. As I mentioned, the bleachers are black in most areas with some green seats sprinkled in to spell out "WHS" with a clover when they are rolled up. Black is the best plastic bleacher color so I won't kill it here. The court has a light wood finish with a big green "W" at center court with "Rocks" written across it in gold script. It's also written along the two sidelines. The HCC conference insignia inside the free throw lane is a nice touch. "Westfield" is written across each baseline in big block letters with a green border. It all has the opaque looking finish over it which is becoming more and more popular these days. It all looks decent. Each baseline wall has a big green area painted above the track. One side has the generic Indiana state plaques for championship and runner up teams in various sports. It also has the jersey banners hanging for past Indiana All-Stars. The other side has literally nothing on it. The normal athletic accomplishment banners have been completely hidden in the far upper corners of the gym on one side. You can't seem them at all from one side of the gym, and on the other you would need binoculars to make out the years. Just a bizarre decision. The top of the sideline wall on that side also houses the athletic accomplishment banners for the Hoosier Crossroads Conference. They seem standard for this conference and they look fine. The conference logo in the center though does look pretty sharp. The wall space overall in the gym leaves a lot to be desired. It reminds me of Lawrence Central in just how barren it looks. The only other element worth pointing out is the world's smallest Jumbotron. They went to all the trouble of hanging a 4 sided scoreboard above center court that only tells the score, time, and quarter. It's even funnier because it has displays on the baseline sides that gives the information to almost zero people. It's like they took a a full one and cut 2/3 of it off. Another bizarre decision.
For a program that's been around for 106 years, the gym has only been around for 26. While it has some oddities that help give it just a twinge of character, it still feels stuck in an era that sucked most of the life out of these basketball venues. When your gym doesn't have any atmosphere on it's own, you have to try and manufacture it artificially through a great team and subsequently a great crowd. Westfield had that for a few years when Braden Smith was here and made one deep postseason run. It doesn't have to be like this though even if your gym is newer. When you have a chance to redesign your gym and make it more modern, add all the shiny bells and whistles you want, go nuts! But try and think about ways you can truly honor your heritage and past, because those are the things people are going to keep coming back for regardless of what the team's record is. Whoever was in charge of this design seemed to not consider this element, and it's evident in the way everything looks and feels. It's not a bad place to watch basketball, but it certainly doesn't do itself any favors.
