About 200 people attended an emotional three-hour meeting in which Felix Chow, the new schools superintendent, gave a PowerPoint presentation on the costs associated with the Wigwam, including $2.65 million in needed repairs. The school board, which rejected the idea of closing the Wigwam in 2009, reversed that decision last March. Several basketball players who live in Anderson now drive to (and start for) neighboring high schools. In the last three years, the city has lost more than 2,000 students and laid off more than 160 teachers, in addition to closing five schools. Many Highland parents refused to send their children to Anderson, the only remaining high school, which had a 57 percent graduation rate. Still, their reaction was nothing like the anger over the 2010 decision to turn Highland into a middle school.
Madison Heights alumni erected a gravestone memorial on the school grounds.
#Highland high school gym registration
The city that had once staggered its factory shifts now staggered registration times at its unemployment office. During the 1970s energy crisis, Anderson made headlines for its 22 percent unemployment rate. The city’s three high schools - Anderson, Madison Heights and Highland - each topped 2,000 in enrollment, and all three of their boys’ basketball teams regularly ranked in the state’s top 10.Īfter graduation, students knew they could land a factory job, work for 30 years, then retire with a pension and benefits. Anderson’s center also included tightly packed subdivisions and the First Baptist Church, which had one of the state’s most vibrant youth groups and needed to use the Wigwam’s parking lot on Sundays.Īnderson’s population peaked at 70,000 in the 1970s, when General Motors operated more than 20 factories and employed one of every three Anderson adults. The city grew rapidly, adding downtown businesses, a four-story brick high school and, in 1925, the first Wigwam, which held 4,800 fans. “But we also need to build a new tradition.”Īnderson, 40 miles northeast of Indianapolis, got its start in manufacturing when natural gas was discovered there in the 1890s. “If we could reopen the Wigwam, I’d lead the charge,” said Joe Nadaline, a longtime Anderson boys’ basketball assistant who just completed his first season as the head coach with a first-round loss in the state tournament. But a recent visit here revealed that the heart of Indiana basketball still beats. They moved into a refurbished gym that holds 2,800, the smallest capacity in their North Central Conference, and finished the season 9-13. This season, for the first time in 50 years, the Indians did not play in the Wigwam. By the early ’90s, attendance was down to 750,000.
#Highland high school gym movie
The possibility of upsets like Milan’s against the much larger Muncie Central to win the 1954 state title - fictionalized in the movie “Hoosiers” - helped the tournament draw 1.5 million spectators in 1965. For decades, all Indiana schools competed in one bracket. Another is the season-ending state tournament. That is one reason people continue to romanticize the state’s relationship to basketball. Indiana still boasts 12 of the nation’s 13 largest high school gyms. “But the interest has really leveled off. “We’re getting better and better players,” said John Harrell, who worked for 40 years on the sports desk of The Herald-Times in Bloomington and now runs Web sites about boys’ and girls’ basketball in Indiana. Given the struggling economy of this city, which has lost many of its manufacturing jobs and residents, the Wigwam’s expense could not be justified, and it closed last summer. Last season, about 450 season tickets were sold. Gradually, though, the enthusiasm diminished. That made the Wigwam the second-biggest high school gym in America, but Anderson athletic directors still found themselves testifying in divorce hearings over the custody of season tickets. The teams and the crowds measured up to the gym’s 8,996-seat capacity. At its peak, the Wigwam attracted 5,000 season-ticket holders to Anderson High School boys’ basketball games.
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