“We used to call it the ‘Snake Pit’ because it felt like the crowd would come down and bite you because they were right on top of you."
This is the sixth of a 10-part series featuring some of Indiana high school basketball's "Lost Gyms."
CRAWFORDSVILLE – John Jones can stand at midcourt of the gym where he played high school basketball almost 40 years ago and feel the memories as he looks around.
“As a kid, I always sat up in that top corner up there,” Jones said, pointing to the spot. “I could put my back against the wall and cheer. If you didn’t get here early, you weren’t going to sit where you wanted to sit.”
Jones, a 1987 Crawfordsville graduate, can point to where his brother sat (first row, midcourt) and where his parents sat in the bleachers. Most of all, he can remember how this place made him feel.
“It was what you looked forward to,” he said. “You watch people who are older than you and you’re like, ‘I want to be a part of that.’”
Jones, the women’s basketball coach at Hanover College, was not alone in that feeling growing up. The Crawfordsville gym, dedicated on Jan. 31, 1940, with a 46-33 victory over Clinton (the first game was a week earlier against Indianapolis Washington), was — and still is — a special place for multiple generations of Crawfordsville natives.
“We used to call it the ‘Snake Pit’ because it felt like the crowd would come down and bite you because they were right on top of you,” said Jim Willhite, a 1979 graduate.
During Willhite’s era, the varsity players sat on a bench at the end of the court during the junior varsity game. When the JV game was getting close to the end of the third quarter, the varsity team would get up to go to the locker room. The fans would stand up and cheer in anticipation of the upcoming varsity game.
“You’d get a standing ovation every time the varsity went to the locker room,” Willhite said. “It raises the hair on the back of my neck even now. I still have all of those great memories.”
The gym, which had a listed capacity of 2,650, was built during a time when there were people who still remembered — and played for — the 1911 Crawfordsville team that was the first basketball state champion in state history. Montgomery County, and Crawfordsville in particular, was the “Cradle of Basketball” in Indiana. Presbyterian minister Rev. Nicholas McCay was instrumental in bringing the game from basketball’s birthplace in Springfield, Mass., to his post as the general secretary of the Crawfordsville YMCA, where players from local high schools and Wabash College would play games in what would become known as the Terminal Building.
That gym, where McCay installed iron hoops and coffee sacks for baskets, was still there in 1958 when Crawfordsville made it to the final four, though by then it was hidden on the second floor above a tavern and frozen food locker. It was torn down a decade later.
Dick Haslam, who played on the 1958 state runner-up team for coach Dick Baumgartner and was named to the Indiana All-Stars team, said several years ago “they can never take away that the first champions were from here.” Haslam, who died in 2022, played his games in the still relatively new Crawfordsville gym. The Athenians moved from the YMCA to the Crawfordsville Auditorium inside the school, to Wabash College to the Crawfordsville Armory before the gym opened at a cost of $250,000 in 1940.
The gym had a six-foot wall on each end and seating all the way around with entrances in the four corners of the gym. Haslam described it as a “Roman theater feel to it with the whole floor surrounded and everybody close to the floor.” The middle section on one side had the student cheer block and the other side reserved home seats.
When Willhite started coming to games as a kid, elementary and Tuttle Middle School students sat on one end. “My cousin and I had a recorder and we would pretend like we were announcing the ballgames,” he said.
Haslam coached from 1963 to 1970, then was succeeded by Paul Curtis, who won 169 games over a 12-year tenure. His first season, Crawfordsville hosted the sectional in the gym for the last time, defeating Ladoga, Linden and Waveland to win the sectional title. The next year, the newly-opened North Montgomery hosted the sectional. But Crawfordsville continued to play in the gym until 1993.
Curtis coached the 1978-79 team that won the regional championship and defeated Gary Roosevelt in the first game of the semistate at Mackey Arena before running into the Anderson buzzsaw in the semistate final that night. “It made you proud just to be on the team,” Willhite said. “Winning the regional was something we hadn’t done since ’58.”
Jones grew up watching those teams. When Curtis was hired as assistant at Purdue in 1982, Mike Sorrell was hired as his replacement. Jones’ sophomore year, in 1985, Crawfordsville won the sectional. Sorrell left after that season for Goshen, where he coached the next 15 seasons. But when Sorrell died in 2007, his widow Ruth asked Jones to be a pallbearer in his funeral.
“If it wasn’t for coach Sorrell coming in and laying the discipline (I don’t know where I’d be),” Jones said. “Hair above the ears, off the collar. Those types of things kind of laid the groundwork for me at an age I needed it. His son Ryan and I are still great friends. When he left, going into my junior year, it was like, ‘Am I still going to be able to do it?’”
Gary Lester was hired as Sorrell’s replacement. Jones, who went on to play at Marian College, played two years with Matt Petty, who would graduate in 1989 as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,608 points. Lester kept seven seniors in Jones’ graduating class, a decision that still means a lot to Jones.
“I’m so glad he did,” Jones said. “There were two or three seniors who didn’t play a lot. We had a sophomore (Petty) who ended up being an Indiana All-Star who started every game and played all the time, but those seniors were totally fine with it because he helped us win games. I’m not sure that’s the culture nowadays.”
During Jones’ junior and senior seasons, Crawfordsville lost just one home game. The most memorable game for Jones was a 29-point performance in a 59-53 home victory over fourth-ranked Lafayette Central Catholic.
“I got subbed out early,” Jones remembered. “I was a little nervous. I remember catching the ball on this side of the floor and throwing it the wrong way. Coach took me out and I was like, ‘I know. I’ll get it.’ That was a memorable game for me personally.”
Shannon Hardesty, an Indiana All-Star, was a star player for Crawfordsville that same year for the girls team, which also packed fans into the gym.
“Even when there is a coaching change, you feel a small disconnection from when you played basketball somewhere,” Jones said. “But it’s nice to come in and say, ‘This is the place that molded me.’ It gave me an opportunity to play college basketball. If I didn’t play basketball here, there’s no way coach (John) Grimes would have found me at Marian.”
After 53 years, the Crawfordsville gym hosted its last game in 1993. The starting five from the 1958 team returned for the final game, after which athletic director Bruce Whitehead showed a videotape of the 1958 state championship loss to Fort Wayne South.
The gym sat empty for several years until it became a part of the Athena Sport and Fitness Center. In 2019, the gym and attached old school was converted into The Laurel Flats, a modernized apartment building. The gym is utilized daily by residents.
Two years ago, in February of 2023, Crawfordsville played Covington in a throwback game at the old gym, nearly 30 years to the day since the varsity team played there. Matt McCarty and Matt Petty, the two leading scorers in program history, were honored at halftime.
“You can’t beat his environment,” McCarty said that night. “I really missed this place. It meant a lot to me. I really grew up as a basketball player in this gym.”
Jones was not able to be there that night because he was coaching his Hanover team. But many of his classmates were. Willhite was there, too.
“What you saw that night was what I saw every night,” Willhite said. “You remember that kind of crowd. My grandson was there, a freshman at the time. He couldn’t believe it. He loved it. The crowd was right on top of you. You know they are there.”
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649. Get IndyStar's high school coverage sent directly to your inbox with the High School Sports newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana high school basketball old gyms: Crawfordsville's 'Snake Pit' not an apartment building
Category: General Sports
