Westview (Current) (3,320) Built 1989
January 10, 2024: Lakeland vs. Westview (Boys)
January 10, 2024: Lakeland vs. Westview (Boys)
“Home” is a word that can have many different connotations to different people. To some it brings up a lot of negative feelings and memories. To some it may not bring many feelings at all. To me, it’s always meant comfort. I’ve called only a few places home throughout my life, and each one was probably my favorite place to be at the time. My friends and family have always called me a homebody because no matter what kind of fun we’re having somewhere else, at least a small part of me is keeping track of the time until I can go home again. When I think of where my love for all this gym nonsense started, it’s my “home gym.” Westview.
My earliest memories of Indiana high school basketball are sitting about 6 rows up on the home side of Westview’s gym with my dad and brother. Packed in tight between people and coats because we knew Mom wouldn’t be happy if we got them dirty. Checking the program every time someone scored to see what the player’s name was beside their number. Always checking to see how many fouls my cousin had up on the old black scoreboard that had little lights for each foul by each player because eventually I learned if he got too many fouls he wouldn’t be able to play anymore. When I got old enough, I got to hang out with my friends at the very top row where we would sit down on offense and stand up and yell on defense because we thought for sure we were impacting the outcome of the game somehow through this ritual. Wearing old Westview jerseys to each game with basketball shorts in the dead of winter because it’s just what you did. Trying to grab as many of the “3” papers hung on the wall for each triple made after the game because it’s just what you did. Talking with my two best friends about how bad we were going to beat Fairfield and Lakeland when we got older, because that’s just what Westview did. Doing all of this amongst over 3,000 other people on a Friday night because it’s just what you did.
I’m admittedly in the bag for Westview, but if you talk to anyone plugged into Indiana hoops the last 50 years, it’s almost universally hailed as the gold standard for a game night experience in northeast Indiana. This is due to the gym itself, and everything else that adds to the atmosphere. It starts as you drive in and see a row of Amish buggies that starts at the old tennis courts and extends all the way to the middle school. Other rural districts in the state have big Amish communities, but I don’t think any others have 500+ that attend games. Some Westview fans like to point out that despite the ridiculous success of the boys program since 1973 (21 sectionals, 6 regionals, 3 semi-states, and 2 state titles), think of how much better the teams would be if they didn’t lose half of the school’s population after 8th grade. Players run out of the tunnel to “The Final Countdown” which remains undefeated as the best pregame song going. As long as I’ve been alive Thad Hart has been the PA announcer, and few are better, particularly when it comes to starting lineups (or singing Sweet Caroline at halftime). The pep band punctuates the arrival of each starter with a resounding riff by the brass section while the drums play menacingly in the background. It all leads to the crescendo of Dan “The Whistler” Byler leading the entire gym in a chorus of “beat’em up, beat’em up, rah rah rah” with the most piercing sound known to man filling the entire venue as the players take the floor for the opening tip. Words don’t even come close to doing it justice, stop what you’re doing immediately and YouTube it if you haven’t experienced it for yourself. And if you think it’s intimidating to start the game that way, it’s even better coming out of the timeout in the final minutes of a close game. There is nothing like it. Oh, and they have red Mountain Dew.
The gym itself is a hidden gem in a part of the state that doesn’t get a lot of broad coverage or recognition for it’s gyms. 3,320 isn’t massive, but it feels like it when you walk in. On the home team side, there’s a set of retractable bleachers that reaches 30 rows high with no break of levels. I could be wrong, but by looking at pictures of all 400+ gyms in Indiana, I don’t think there is a larger singular section of retractable bleachers in the state. On the opposite sideline is an almost equally impressive set of bleachers that go up about 25 rows high. At the very top are a couple of small press row tables set up for radio broadcasts. Behind those tables is a glass divider. Behind that is a very small bleacher section of about 7 rows. This is the home of the pep band and any other brave soul with the energy to climb up the endless stairs on both sides of the gym you have to use to reach the top. I don’t know of any other gym with such a discrepancy between the number of rows of bleachers on either side of a level divider. My hands and feet start to sweat just thinking about being up there looking straight down on the courts when all the bleachers are rolled up for practices. Having such huge single sections of bleachers allows there to be three full sized courts available to coaches when they’re all pushed back. There are also 18 different hoops hanging from the ceiling for practices, which is unheard of. It’s actually pretty cool to look up and see them all crisscrossed in different directions up in the air on game days.
The court here isn’t bad by any stretch, but I’m not head over heels about it like I am for other features of the gym. It’s fairly modern and has a clean look. The fonts are more cartoony, and I’m more partial to the block lettering that was there when I was a kid. Center court has two very subdued warrior arrows that look kind of weird on their own. Just seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to do something really cool. I’m nitpicking though. Hanging above the center circle is a massive jumbotron that is a luxury to put it mildly for a 2A school with a gym sitting less than 4,000, but I’m not complaining! It looks awesome. The two crown jewels of the gym sit on opposing baseline walls. On the west end, across the entire wall, are rows and rows of gorgeous athletic accomplishment banners. Each is perfectly hung in neat columns for each sport, rising in height for each level of accolade. All red with gold trim. Perfect lettering that is easily read from any point in the gym with a view of the wall. Impossible to be improved upon. The opposite wall has the best conference team display I’ve seen anywhere, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find anything that rivals it. The NECC logo is in the center of a ring of rectangular, wooden signs honoring each school. These signs are huge and have handpainted lettering and logos. I fell in love with these as a kid and I’ve never lost my admiration for them. This is really true for the whole gym.
Outside the gym in the hallway you’ll find three huge pictures. Two are of the back-to-back state championship teams that were the genesis of me and hundreds of other kids at Westview falling in love with basketball. Underneath is a third picture of the runner up team almost 20 years later that my brother was on. To see the complete joy and relief in the first two pictures compared to the exhaustion and hurt in the third is quite the juxtaposition. Two completely different emotions, two decades apart, but illustrating the same point: this matters to us. A lot. For people who have experienced high school basketball in places and at times where it truly matters, it never really goes away. I’ve told my wife before that while playing varsity basketball at Westview was a thrill I’ll never be able to replicate, I felt more emotion in the ups and downs of it while watching my brother play. Seeing him be able to experience it for himself (while being 10 times the player I was) was just the best. I now have younger cousins getting ready to be the third generation to go through it themselves. They’ll probably wear 31. They’ll get to walk out to the whistler. They’ll get to look up and see a couple thousand people going crazy, a lot of them wearing tsiplcops (if you know, you know, as the kids say). They’ll probably beat Churubusco by 50. Because it’s just what we do.
