Cracker Box Gyms - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Cracker Box Gyms

It was fun watching via live stream Loramie’s game Saturday night at the historic Hoosier’s gym in Knightstown, IN.

Loramie played great and won the varsity game 56-49. JV lost a heartbreaker in OT 51-50. You can see the highlights here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbAdwvDcHBQ

The old gym brought back many memories of playing basketball in “cracker box gyms”, our nickname for the small basketball courts prevalent back then.

As is evident on these photos from the old Loramie gym, the backboard was mounted right to the wall and the sidelines were also walled off from the elevated bleachers. The courts in those days were so small, the foul circles intersected with the center jump ball circle. The shorter court made the game much slower, which helped prevent injuries of players banging into the walls.

The backboards were wooden as well, and they all seemed to have selective dead spots. All these factors really gave the home team a distinct advantage. On the other hand, it was a huge disadvantage for those of us used to playing on the smaller gyms when we played on a regulation-size court with a glass backboard, especially during the tournament. We could never master that “kiss off the glass” shot, plus we'd run out of gas in a hurry!

The scoreboards in the cracker box gyms were also ancient - no tenth of seconds showing on those old antiques!

All the SCAL teams had smaller gyms except Fairlawn, as the schools in Green & Perry townships had consolidated in 1952 and eventually built a new school with a regulation court. Russia’s gym was probably the smallest in the county while Botkins had a regulation size court, but with a tile floor since it also served as the cafeteria. That floor had absolutely no spring. Fortunately, all those cracker boxes are now long gone, having been demolished. But the memories go on! In fact, I have a piece of Loramie’s gym floor among my keepsakes appropriately stored according to my wife in a box of memorabilia in the attic!

Here’s an interesting article about cracker box gyms that you might enjoy.

Back to the Hoosier’s gym to wrap up this blog, it became famous in the 1986 movie called “The Hoosier’s” about a team from a small town in Indiana that won the state basketball championship in the 1950’s. Back then, all the high school basketball teams in the state played in the same class, so a small school winning it all was a rarity. Here’s a short segment from the movie:
https://youtu.be/A0VVTCnBM_I

And better yet for me, here’s my niece’s son Deegan playing point guard during Loramie's JV game on the Hoosier cracker box gym - doesn’t get any better than that.

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