The Tiernan Center, Richmond High School’s gigantic sports complex, is now twenty-five years old according to an article by Josh Chapin in the Palladium-Item. The official capacity is 8,100 people, but I’m fairly sure they crammed a few more people into that December 10, 1987 game between #1 Richmond and #2 Muncie Central, easily the most exciting sporting event I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. It was a Thursday night. I remember our physics teacher, Mrs. Shuck, offering the opinion that school should have been canceled after a game like that. In any case, it’s the fifth largest high school gym in the country. (Indiana has 8 of the 10 largest.)
The rationale for the mega-gyms seems to have faded a bit with the end of Indiana’s basketball tournament. The whole idea was to build yourself a mega-gym, secure home court advantage through regionals, and get to semi-state. With the imposition of class-basketball system, Richmond isn’t even guaranteed a home sectional game.
I wish the article had discussed how the gym was paid for. Having the 5th largest high school gym at a “dropout factory,” strongly suggests some misspent resources. Still, it worked for me. I got a good education and got to watch some fine basketball games.
Back then, probably the biggest rationale was that it held the number of people who wanted to go to the games. Sellouts were a regular occurrence for the first five years or so. The decline of the program and class basketball together are mostly what have emptied the place.
That game was nuts. I got to talk to Muncie Central’s Chandler Thompson years later (after his Ball State team had come within seconds of beating UNLV to go to the Final Four, after a productive career in Europe, etc.) and told him I was at that game when he rose up between five Richmond defenders to dunk the ball in that amazing game. He remembered the game well, of course, and wasn’t surprised that people still talked about it (at the time) thirteen years later. It was a huge deal, with Indy news choppers parked on the football field, etc.
Yes the Richmond vs. Muncie Central game was the best game I have ever attended. Watching Mr. Clutch Woody sink those two free throws to secure the win is still etched in my memory. During our years at Richmond High School the Red Devils never (I mean Never) lost a home game which is unheard of.
The Terian Center was always sold out. I don’t recall ever seeing so many exciting games. I still go occasionally to the games there but it’s nothing like the atomosphere when it first opened. Now the Terian Center is going through more changes becoming the home gym of the Indiana University Red Wolves. I can’t wait to see when every seat is sold again.
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Wow! That’s hard to believe. Hate to admit it, but I graduated 27 (almost 28) years ago, so we had to make do with Civic Hall.
I agree that it is hard to justify having a mega-gym without the one-big-tournament basketball playoffs of years gone by. Richmond wasn’t a drop-out factory in those days, however, so at the time the expense may have *seemed* justified. My opinion is that huge gyms are rarely justified at public schools, no matter how prosperous the community. A good gymnasium that could be used for physical education classes and basketball games does not have to have room to seat thousands of people, many of whom no longer have children in the school system.
Civic Hall has been converted to a performing arts auditorium, so there is no going back to the old days in Richmond.