JEFF JACOBS
Legend will live on after Alumni Hall is gone
FAIRFIELD — Dad and son were huge Fairfield basketball fans, dedicated season ticketholders, back in the day when tickets to games here were precious and college games on television were rare.
“Right here,” said Sean Barker, pointing to two red bench seats four rows up from the court numbered 13 and 14. “Those were our seats.”
Barker is my sports editor at Hearst Connecticut Media, yet on this Friday he was an 8-year-old kid walking into Alumni Hall with his dad Jack. They called this place architecturally the biggest of its kind in the world when it opened in 1959. In reality it is a glorified Quonset hut, 11 arches propping its semicircular frame, filling to a capacity of 2,479.
The number doesn’t include a since-discarded set of pullout bleachers at one end that extended to the baseline and sent many an opposing player flying into the laps of screaming Fairfield fans. When the old joint fills, biggest isn’t the word that comes to mind. Loud. Suffocating. Those words do.
The Stags played Quinnipiac Friday night, will play Rider on Sunday afternoon and that will be it for Alumni Hall. It is scheduled to be demolished and bulldozed starting in the spring to make way for construction of the new $45 million Arena and Convo
cation Center.
“I think this weekend is a combination of excitement and nostalgia, I wouldn’t say sadness,” Fairfield athletic director Paul Schlickmann said. “I’ve come to learn in 2
1⁄2years how much this place means to an awful lot of people.”
What strikes first-year coach Jay Young most about Alumni Hall?
“How close the fans are to the bench, they’re right on top of you,” Young said. “You’re mad at a kid, you turn around and his mother is right there. It’s loud. We played Siena and we were having trouble getting our offensive calls into the players.”
There is maybe two feet separating spectators from the team benches and, if you include the two feet of each of the fans, even less distance. It is a scant exaggeration to say coaches can feel the fans breathe.
“In those days when I was 8, 9, 10, the visiting bench was right in front of where we sat,” Barker said. “Rick Pitino, Jim Valvano, Jim Calhoun, Tom Davis, they’d all stand up the last four-five minutes, coaches and players. I couldn’t see so I used to yell at them to sit down.”
All those guys coached here and so did Dave Gavitt of Providence and Coach K when he was at Army, Frank Layden, Bill Raftery and John Thompson. Thompson also played here with Providence. So did Marvin Barnes, Ernie DiGregorio. Jeff Ruland of Iona, Lionel Simmons of La Salle and Norm Van Lier of St. Francis (Pa.), too.
From the Beach Boys in 1967 to Ludacris in 2008, semi-annual concerts long were held at Alumni Hall. David Crosby had already left the group, so he didn’t play here with the Byrds in 1973. But David Robinson did with Navy in the 80s.
Sports Illustrated once wrote that Alumni Hall hosted “the most vocal and loyal fans in the nation.” Yeah, the place is legend. So why wouldn’t John Legend perform here in December 2008?
“I’ve gotten so many emails from former players coming back this weekend, so I know how sentimental it is for them and the great memories in this building,” said Young, “Joe DeSantis does TV for us, so I’ve heard all about the great games.”
One of them was in February 1982. Barker, whose family seats had move higher on the other side of the court, was 12. The Stags played Iona and this was the game that almost never ended. Five overtimes. Three and a half hours. Nine players fouled out. There were 105 free throws before Tom Foley, who had not entered the game until the second overtime, scored on a layup with four seconds left to give Iona a 102-100 win.
The one game Sean was not at was Feb. 25, 1978.
“That’s the game of lore,” Sean, then eight, said. “That’s the one everyone talks about. I was dying to go. My mother went instead.”
Holy Cross, ranked as high as 12th nationally that season with Ron Perry, was stunned by Fairfield, 123103.
“At least 10,000 people claim to have been at that game,” said Fairfield communications and media relations director Jack Jones said. “I’m the only one that doesn’t.” Jones and Sean Barker. Jack Barker started going to Fairfield games in 1956 at Bridgeport Armory, now the Shehan Center. He served in Vietnam. And when he returned, he bought season tickets in 1968. He remembers attending Fairfield losing by one to Bob Lanier and No. 3 St. Bonaventure at New Haven Arena. Jack, now 78, started bringing Sean to games when he was only three.
These were the days before the domination of the Big East. Regional teams were scattered through the ECAC, Yankee Conference, etc. Fairfield had some really good teams, had a home-winning streak of 27 finally snapped by Raftery and Seton Hall in 1978. After the MAAC started in 1980, following the formation of the Big East a year earlier, Fairfield would go on to the NCAA Tournament in 1986, 1987 and 1997.
Memories were etched in Barker’s mind. On Friday, he’d point to a spot at the other end of Alumni Hall.
“Over there,” he said softly.
In January 1987, Lillian Pollard, the 73-year-old grandmother of Fairfield guard Troy Bradford, suffered a heart attack during a game against Fordham. She was taken to Park City Hospital where she was pronounced dead. The game was halted with 1:42 left. Fordham won 74-70.
An old building has many stories to tell.
“My dad was pretty low key,” Barker said. “I remember once when an opposing player fouled out, the whole student section stood up and started chanting, ‘You! You! You! You!’ I stood up to do it and he grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me down. ‘Don’t you ever. Do you know what that kid does? He’s not getting paid.’ He was huge on student-athletes.”
Jack, who still has season tickets, remembers Billy Jones as Fairfield’s best player. Sean says DeSantis and Mark Young. Who’s right matters less than the father-son bond forged in a special place in Connecticut sports history.
“After I started working and got married, like everyone else, life gets in the way of hanging out with your dad,” Sean said. “I remember about 10 years ago, I came over, snuck up and tapped him on the shoulder. He was thrilled I’d come to a game.
“He’s in Florida right now. We were supposed to go to a last game together here (against St. Peter’s in January), but he had a really bad cold. We talked the other day and he said, ‘You going this weekend?’ I had mixed feelings. You remember it all as a kid. It’s different. So much of it was spending time with him here.”
The Fairfield community is stoked for the new place. If all goes well, the Arena and Convocation Center will open in time for the conference schedule during the 2021-2022 season. All home games next season will be played at Webster Bank Arena.
Webster Bank was the primary site for Fairfield starting in 2001. The legend became as worn as the old NIT banners that were taken down at Alumni Hall. It was down to one or two games a year. With the plans for the new place gaining legs, Schlickmann was able to bring seven games last year and eight game this year to campus.
“Literally hundreds of people have come up to me since I got here 2 1⁄2years ago,” said Schlickmann, the former Central Connecticut AD. “We got to get basketball back to campus.
“The Convocation Center will be a crown jewel for this campus. A great statement for the trajectory this university is on, to expand our brand nationally.”
From pictures in his office, to video presentations, the coach already uses it in recruiting.
“It’s exciting,” said Young, who was in Alumni Hall once before this season when he unsuccessfully tried to recruit Terry Tarpey of Fairfield Prep to Stony Brook. “It’s an arms race in college basketball. It speaks to the commitment Fairfield has to men’s and women’s basketball. We’re going to have as nice a facility as there is in the country.”
There will be sparkle where red paint is now chipped. There will be chairback seats where worn benches now sit. Alumni Hall will be left behind, but the memories will be brought to the new place. Sean Barker remembers helping his dad up the stairs the last time the two were here, just as Jack had helped him up those same stairs many years ago.
A new building will be a chance for dads and sons to form new bonds.