Winchester (2,300) Built 1953
January 23, 2024: Yorktown vs. Winchester (Boys)
January 23, 2024: Yorktown vs. Winchester (Boys)
A lot of Indiana high school basketball history is found in places that are not physically connected to a high school at all. Whether it be old high school gyms that are now attached to current elementary schools, old gyms that now stand alone after the school that used to be attached has been torn down, or gyms that were just built in another part of town for whatever reason and became a staple of community life, these monoliths are some of our most cherished treasures. The few that I've had the pleasure of visiting are oozing with heritage and character. Man, if walls could talk. Almost of all them were built before 1960, before the term "multipurpose" was ever coined. Arsenal Tech, Muncie Central, Kokomo, Southridge, and of course the Hoosier Gym at Knightstown are the few I've been able to experience out of dozens that are still hanging on across the state. They share many characteristics: tiny foyers as soon as you walk in, hallways barely wide enough for 2 people to stand shoulder to shoulder, a whole lot of concrete, and the great question of how on earth are you going to heat this thing? I got to add another gem to this list tonight in Winchester. It's one I had never heard of before, but I am excited to tell people about going forward.
Usually when people have fond memories of basketball in our fine state, there are a lot of sights and sounds associated with them. They are often the first thing that hit you when you enter a gym. Tonight something hit me when I walked into Winchester that I hadn't experienced since the last time I visited that dumpster Fairfield calls a gym as a teenager: heat. After asking around and looking up into the rafters, it became evident that the building is using the original boiler system to heat the gym, and they don't seem to have a great deal of control over what they set it at. This was further evidenced by the fact that the most of the 1950s windows running along the very top of bleachers on both sides were all open. It didn't seem to have much effect as I climbed the bleachers to sit in the upper section of stands. Almost every patron had discarded whatever coat/sweatshirt they had brought with them for the night and were fanning themselves profusely with a program. All part of the quaint experience I guess!
Once my body finally acclimated to the conditions, I was able to look around more and take stock of my surroundings. As you walk through the tight hallways underneath the bleachers, there are some cool original painted signage providing directions to different seating areas in the gym. There's a lot of cream-colored cinder blocks. You can also find a few built-in display cases in these areas, though there is a bigger area out by the concession stands that does a great job of displaying and honoring past teams. There are 2 main entrances to the gym, but each corner has a beautiful set of classic wooden double doors into the gym that are straight out of Hoosiers. In the gym itself are more reminders of just how old this beauty is. The great steel rafters running across the length of the gym look like they were forged and delivered straight from Gary itself when it was in its heyday. We've mentioned the HVAC system which is just monstrous compared to anything modern that makes its way along one baseline side of the gym. There's also a thin cable running out of a box in each corner of the gym up to one of the side baskets with instructions on it of how to raise and lower them. Just a lot of little details that have been untouched for 70 years.
The design of the gym itself reminded me of a slightly bigger and grander version of Cowan, which is high praise as that is a timeless and pristine facility in its own right. The gym floor was redone fairly recently and isn't remarkable but still looks sharp. It includes the black and light gold color scheme found throughout the gym. It matches the cream-colored cinders mentioned earlier, which I think is why I like them so much as opposed to the normal white variety. Along each sideline are short sections of maybe 8 rows of plastic bleachers. There is a high 8 foot wall at the top that separates the bottom and upper levels. The permanent wooden bleachers at the upper level rise much higher with 15-20 rows making their way up to the rafters and old windows above. They also are painted light gold, and are very spaced out, giving more leg room than maybe any gym I've been in. On the small section of wall between the windows and top row of bleachers is a nicely painted "Falcons" on each side. There is also a very skinny ladder on the side wall here leading up to the HVAC system. There's probably not an amount of money on earth you could pay me to scale that. Along the huge baseline wall that isn't mostly covered by the HVAC system is a phenomenal set of athletic accomplishment banners. They're exactly the kind I love, (akin to Oak Hill and Westview) but they're set up in a really unique way. There's a section for sectional, regional, county, and conference champions, and then a banner for each sport underneath those. This means there are a ton of banners, but it's so organized and simple that it works well. Luckily Winchester has had a ton of success across all sports so it doesn't look ridiculous. The opposite wall has much less wall space, and it's occupied by a few state-runner up banners and an adequate conference team display. The circular signs for each school are a little different. The final touch that shows the age of the gym is how little space there is between the basket and wall on the baselines. That's an old gym staple.
When you sit in gyms like Winchester, it's almost impossible not to feel a yearning for a time that is long passed. I'm a very nostalgic person as I've mentioned before. I often bemoan to my wife that I was born in the wrong generation. I would give anything to experience high school basketball in these stand alone facilities 40-70 years ago during the era when it meant the most. I do my best not to dwell in this space though, because man I still love it in the here and now. Gyms like this have the ability to give you a slice of what it was like back then. It's not the same, but it's what we have, and it's still pretty awesome.
