Whiteland (Current) (4,649) Built 1958
January 2, 2026: Anderson vs. Owen Valley (Girls)
January 2, 2026: Anderson vs. Owen Valley (Girls)
I seem to be researching and seeking out relics of the very earliest days of Indiana high school basketball lately. Last weekend I headed over to the "new" Crawfordsville gym to see a game there for the first time. While I was interested in the gym, I was really looking forward to seeing the trophy from the first ever IHSAA boys basketball tournament in 1911 that Crawfordsville won. You can imagine my disappointment and shock when the only thing on display was a framed picture of. it The real thing is at the Hall of Fame in New Castle, which makes sense. I did get to see the 1912 trophy again a few weeks ago at Lebanon. On one of my many snow/cold weather days that I had off in January, I trekked all the way out to Montgomery County to track down a couple faded gyms, including Wingate. Wingate was home to the 1913 and 1914 state champions and the first superstar of Indiana high school basketball, Homer Stonebraker. It's really neat whenever I encounter anything from this era of Hoosier Hysteria. I think because there is literally no one left anymore to tell these stories firsthand, they almost feel like fairy tales, but they're very real! Few current high schools can display memorabilia or pictures going back this far. My first game of the new year took me to one of these few schools, and they've done an incredible job of preserving that history and helping it come to life.
I can trace Whiteland's basketball history back to 1914 when they lost to New Richmond 9-28 in the state tournament. They can trace their history back even further! They have a framed photo hanging in one of the tunnel entrances to the gym of their 1905 basketball team, yes I said 1905. That is a mere 14 years after basketball was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts. I'm not sure if they had even figured out to cut holes in the bottoms of the peach baskets yet. My favorite names from that team are Iliff Brown and Chelsa Boone. They look like they meant business. The tunnels entrances also display other fantastic team pictures. Some of the individual poses they made the players do in these are just the best. Nothing is more intimidating than Delmar Hicks doing jazz hands in his photo op. I could've selected a dozen different cool displays to include here, but I chose a few of my favorites. I'd love to see more at other schools, though I know much has been lost to storage rooms and the sands of time. We may not know all their stories, but guys like Walter Umbarger still deserved to be honored in some way.
Whiteland is one of the towns outside of 465 that really used to be independent and have its own identity, but is slowly being infiltrated by the furthest reaches of suburban Indy sprawl. That doesn't mean people here have forgotten about the heritage of the Whiteland Warriors. The Warriors filled this gym from the late 50s well into the 90s before attendance slowly started tailing off like it did in many portions of the state. They've had a lot of good teams worth cheering for in Glenn Ray Gymnasium over the years (named after a famous coach from the 20s and 30s). While those good teams didn't find a lot of postseason success (only 6 sectional titles in over 100 years), their home games were a raucous affair from what I've been told, and it isn't hard to imagine once you enter the gym they played them in.
The Whiteland arena features a good ole fashioned upside-down sunken gym concept. Meaning it looks like a sunken gym, but you walk in the bottom and travel up instead of starting at the top and working your way down. You enter the gym through one of the four entrances that sit on the edges of the baselines. They are not in the very corners like in a lot of gyms with this setup. These tunnel entrances are where so many of the old photos and memorabila from a century ago are hung. The permanent bleachers envelope the tunnels on all sides. They go up 14 rows all around the gym. Most of what you see is the grey concrete underneath, but the bench seats are covered in a blue rubber material you occasionally find on old permanent seats that have maybe started to splinter over the years. The only breaks in the bleachers are a few narrow sets of stairs. There's a concourse all the way around the top of the bleachers that can be reached by climbing the steps up from the playing floor or by using one of the staircases located in all four corners of the gym. I didn't include a picture of them, but the staircases are kind of hidden by wooden partitions that match the paint on the walls so they blend in really well. There are some vinyl banners on the upper walls here honoring Whiteland athletes who show exemplary sportsmanship in different sports which is always a cool thing to see celebrated.
It's probably time to address the one thing that has stood out to me about this gym from the first time I saw a picture of it, that drop ceiling. Drop ceilings are never going to described as showy or fancy. They are the epitome of function over form. They are not very common in old gyms or new gyms. I wonder if the drop ceiling has always been in place, or if it was added at some point over the years. It makes a fairly large gym feel much smaller and compact. I actually came across an old YouTube video of a Whiteland athletic director talking about how they stopped playing volleyball in the gym because the ceiling was so low they kept having to call ceiling interfence (if that's a thing) when playing in the gym. I wouldn't say I like it necessarily, but it definitely makes the place a little more unique. Hanging from this low ceiling along one sideline are some nice looking Mid-State Conference team banners. Above the baselines hang old sectional championship and Johnson County tournament championship banners. These date all the way back to when they were called the Whiteland Wrens instead of the Warriors (a bit of a downgrade if you ask me). There are also two Indiana All-Star jersey banners hanging up here as well. If you're looking for your standard boring old vinyl athletic accomplishment banners for different sports, don't worry! You can still find those out hanging in the hallway, which is admittedly weird. The playing floor is neat and trimmed. There is a blue border around the whole perimeter with "Whiteland" written in clear letters across the baseline. Most of the court is a light-gold color, but the areas inside the three points have been stained much darker. A neat Warrior head sits at center court.
I watched the Anderson girls play one of their best games of the season in this gym during a holiday tournament. There were probably 25 people in the stands, and two of those were my boys who were just having a blast running through the rows because there was literally no one within 40 feet of us in any direction. It was a tight game from wire to wire with a bunch of lead changes, angry coaches, dramatic referees, and everything else that comes with a barnburner. Would it have been even better if there 4,000 people in the stands, sure. That doesn't mean I didn't have a great time though. I'm sure that Whiteland home games are not this empty typically, but I know they aren't what they used to be, and that's okay. We can all be old geezers if we want (which I'm definitely guilty of at times) and blame everything on class basketball and transfer rules and everything else, or we can enjoy the basketball we still have today while still having a deep appreciation for a time when things were different. That's what I felt as I watched a great modern game, in a 70 year old gym, which displays incredible basketball relics from over a century ago.
