Some former gymnasiums took center stage ... literally
The Post-Gazette recently surveyed a panel of high school coaches and asked for the best places to watch a high school basketball game in the WPIAL or City League. The answers might differ greatly if the same question were asked 40-50 years ago.
Of the 55 boys and girls coaches who picked their five favorite gyms, some chose a gym that is no longer used, has been torn down or is in a school that is no longer used. While some of those old gyms might not have made them the best places to watch a game, they had qualities that made them unique in their own right.
Some of those old-school gyms would’ve been good for the movie “Hoosiers.” Some were extremely small, but had character. Some had balconies where fans sat. One of the most unique home courts in the history of the WPIAL was at the old North Catholic High School in Troy Hill. The court was on a stage in the school auditorium. The school closed and re-located to a new school in Cranberry to 2014.
“I have four boys who all used to go to my practices at the old school,” North Catholic girls coach Molly Rottmann said. “To this day, they say they miss that place.”
When North Catholic opened in 1939, the court was built in the auditorium and fans sat on wooden seats, looking up at the court for games like it was a Broadway play. Sometimes if a player tried too hard to save a ball going out of bounds, he might have to jump off the stage about 6 feet to the floor.
The gym was remodeled in the late 1970s. The court was turned, extended into the auditorium seating area and some seats removed. But some auditorium seats remained and there was still a dropoff under the one basket into the seats. A player going too hard for a layup could end up in the lap of a fan in one of the wooden seats.
Rottmann played at North Catholic in the 1980s and coached there before the school was moved.
“As long as I was there, I only saw one person fly off the court on a fast break,” Rottmann said with a laugh. “But teams would come there and right away would ask, ‘Do many people fly off here?’ I would say, ‘Yes, of course,’ just to make them a little more nervous.”
Clairton’s old tiny gym was also on a stage in a small auditorium. The school eventually built a new gym. The old Wilkinsburg High School gym was up a few floors at the school.
Lawrenceville Catholic, which closed in the late 1980s, had some powerful teams while playing at tiny St. Mary Lyceum gym, which had only seating on a balcony. The court was so small, the over-and-back-line was the opposite free-throw line. The team won a WPIAL Class 1A title in 1985 and made it to the championship game again in 1986 before closing.
Mars boys coach Rob Carmody grew up in Lawrenceville and used to attend Lawrenceville Catholic games.
“I remember watching those really good Lawrenceville Catholic teams with Marvin Bailey, Steve Snyder and Brace Lowe in the 1980s,” Carmody said. “They’d play a 2-3 zone and they didn’t have to cover the corners because the court was so small. It was nearly impossible for other teams to score.
“The other thing I remember, and this could never happen today, was the cheer that the fans said — and I think it was the only cheer they used. It was, ‘We are the ‘Ville, the ‘Ville will kill … we are the ‘Ville, the ‘Ville will kill.’”
Old City League gyms used to be extremely small. The out-of-bounds lines were so close to the walls that the rule was a player had to keep one foot on the wall while throwing the ball inbounds. Frank Halloran, girls coach at Avonworth High School, remembers going to watch a great Fifth Avenue team play a City League home game in the mid-1970s. Fifth Avenue was located on Fifth Ave. in the Uptown section of Pittsburgh.
“We went to see Sam Clancy,” Halloran said. “I think they played Allegheny High School. There’s nothing today like that environment.”
Many other old gyms had a certain aura, even if they were small. A few coaches mentioned Farrell High School as having one of the best gyms — even today — because of the history in the place. Farrell left the WPIAL in 2006, but legendary Farrell coach Ed McCluskey won 11 WPIAL titles and seven state championships from 1951-76. The gym these days is named after McCluskey. It’s a place that drips with history — of great Farrell players and teams. In the 1954-55 season, legendary player Wilt Chamberlain and his Overbrook High team of Philadelphia lost only one game. It was to Farrell, 59-58, at Farrell High School, the house that McCluskey built.