2003
Fans, memories will fill Senior High gym By JIM NAVEAU 419-993-2087 jnaveau@limanews.com LIMA — It will be a night for looks, for glances, maybe even for pointing to spots on the floor in the old gym. Lima Senior’s gym will open its doors for a basketball game one last time Saturday night when the Spartans boys play Akron Central-Hower. The first 2,000 fans through the doors will go home with a commemorative coin. But that number is a tiny fraction of the thousands of memories the expected sellout crowd will bring with them. Lima Senior played 49 seasons in the gym. Lima Central Catholic rented it for so long — 47 seasons — that it felt like home. So, while the Spartans are playing Central-Hower, quite a few people in the crowd will be watching that game but seeing things from games played years or decades ago. Maybe they’ll glance at the end bleachers and remember how the teams used to sit under the baskets instead of at sidecourt in the early days of the gym. If a player gets a breakaway for a slam dunk, maybe they’ll see Greg Simpson the first time he ever tossed the ball to himself for a dunk. Maybe they’ll see Bob Butler’s silky backcourt game or Anthony Thompson’s fist pump when he ran onto the court during the pregame introductions. Or maybe they’ll see Joe Fisher and the guy he still calls one of his best friends, Jack Kill, battling each other in a classic Lima Central Catholic-Delphos St. John’s Sunday afternoon matchup. Maybe they’ll see Aaron and Anthony Hutchins. Or Tom Terry. Maybe they’ll see Mike Ca-sey hitting a shot from the left side to beat Sidney in the final seconds. Those fans will be seeing great plays and players from the past. But they’ll also be seeing themselves, like images in old black and white photos, as they were then. They’ll remember their special games or moments and how they felt. That’s why, as Detroit columnist Mitch Albom wrote on the final day of Tiger Stadium, this is different than closing a bank. Lima Senior has won 357 of the 481 games it has played at home, going into tonight’s next-to-last game against Napoleon. The Spartans have won 74 percent of their home games and LCC won 71 percent of its games at Lima Senior with a 319-131 record. Lima Senior had six unbeaten seasons at home and LCC had five. The two teams combined to go 40-0 on the Senior High court during the 1992-93 and 1993-94 seasons. But a big game at Lima Senior with 3,500 fans packed into the gym, sitting so close to the court they were almost participants, can’t be described just in terms of wins and losses. It was an event. Retired Middletown Journal sports editor Jerry Nardiello remembers the Middies’ legendary coach Paul Walker saying you never knew what could happen at Lima. Like the night the student in the Spartan outfit being carried around the gym on the plat-form before the game told his crew to back up several feet when they positioned him right in front of the rim. Then he jumped off the platform, slammed down a thunderous dunk but missed his landing, with unfortunate consequences for him. Or the night at a small-school district tournament game when some unhappy fans from the losing team surrounded one of the referees after the final buzzer, took his toupee and tossed it around the bleachers. Ohio State basketball legend Bill Hosket played only one game at Lima Senior and it was 41 years ago. But a smile came to his face immediately when he was asked if he remembered it. “There was a play late in the game where I got knocked down. I remember how when you go off the floor you have to walk between the bleachers,” said Hosket, now an OSU broadcaster. “When I was walking off the floor this elderly lady leans over like she’s going to say some-thing to me. I thought maybe it was somebody who knew my dad because he had reffed a lot in that league. So I stopped. She swung her purse at me and hit me with it. Then she said, ‘You charged,’’’ Hosket said, with a laugh. Saturday night, the old gym will exit to a much warmer sendoff. And then it’s on to the gym at the new Lima Senior High School next season. |