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Voices roar. Pom-poms swish.
Tlie ball thum|is down the lxudwood floor as hometown
tans shout ft>r one last basket before halftime during tlie
opening game of the 2007 high school boys’ sectional
tournament in New Castle, Ind., last February.
As the halftime buzzer sounds, players hustle from
the court to the locker room while tlie crowd stands
and cheers in the New Castle Chrysler Fieldhouse, die
world's hugest high school gymnasium.
"New Castle is a basketball town," says Chase Stigall,
18, a senior and member of the New Castle
Trojans basketball team. “Everyone
comes out on Friday nights to watch
I the game.”
I Basketball fever runs deep in
I New Castle (pop. 17,780). In hut,
* that's why the community’ built
H . a gymnasium to seat 9,325
■ I spectators in 1959.
"We had so many
people wanting to see
the games that they
couldn’t all get in the
old Church Street
gym,” recalls Bill
Lehr, 79, New
castle High
School princi-
Ifc' pal from l% 7
to 1979 "So
the communi-
Chase Stigall focuses
on a free throw.
ty pitched in to see that a big
enough gym was built."
Volunteers raised more
than $1 million for the
81,000-square-foot field
house, where the Trojans
practice and high school sec
tionals have been hosted each
year since the giant gymna
sium was built.
“This is a great [dace to see
basketball," says Ray Pavy,
66, sitting atop the field
house’s upper deck. “There’s
not a bod seat in the house.”
An avid Trojans fan, Pavy
is part of New Castle’s leg-
endary hoops heritage. During the last game played
at the old Church Street gym in 1959, Pavy scored 51
points and rival Kokomo's Jimmy Rayl shot 49, setting
a state scoring record for two players in a single game.
Basketball is a sport that’s at the very core of life in
New Castle, says Neil Thornhill, a local dentist and
basketball historian. “My family has had season tickets
for almost 50 years,’’ lie says. “1 played guard back when
1 was in high school."
During one memorable 1961 tournament, a bliz
zard hit during a Saturday evening game, stranding
more than 2,000 fans in the fieldhouse. Townspeople
were able to drive home, but toads leading exit of town
became so treacherous they were closed. "Gtrs were
getting stuck everywhere," recalls New Castle resident
Jack Riggs, 75.
Trojans fans support the hometown team
at Now Castle (Ind.) Chrysler Fieldhouse,
f ! the world’s largest high school gymnasium.
’ >&s&*** ''V
CX ’Mil, j\
■' yl A ”
i dL __
Nearby grocery stores and bakeries carried in sand
wiches and ckxighnuts to feed the crowd. On Sunday
morning, the sermon of a local Presbyterian minister
was piped in and the gym became a church for a day.
New Gistle’s basketball lieritage is evident through
out tlx- town, from the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame,
across tlx* street from the fieldlxxise, to tlie Steve Alford
All-American Inn, nanxxl for a local hexips legend. Tlx?
two-story nxxel on the outskirts of town has a pickup
sized basketball shoe in tlie parking lot and a lobby
filled with memorabilia of Alford’s career as
a New Castle High School star, Indiana
University All-American, NBA [slayer,
Olympic gold medalist arxl current
University ot New Mexico c«uh. fiifijlllj
Another giganut busketUrll slxxr is H
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