LOST GYMS: Long a source of pride, the Medaryville gym needs help for second life
Medaryville gym in Pulaski County, built in the early 1950s, is falling into disrepair. But community members willing to help gym have second life.
This is the third of a 10-part series featuring some of Indiana high school basketball‘s “Lost Gyms.”
MEDARYVILLE, Ind. – On a bright spring morning, about two dozen people gather inside the Medaryville gym. The topic: potential restoration of the once-beautiful gym that sits along the west side of U.S. Route 421 in this community of 559 residents in Pulaski County.
Father time has not been kind to the one-time home of the Medaryville Black Horses. Years of neglect have left the gym in a sad state. A leaking roof has ruined part of the original wood floor. There is junk scattered throughout the gym, along with a layer of dust and bird droppings covering the playing floor. The utilities have been shut off for several months.
But if you look up, perhaps an apt metaphor considering the goal of this group, there is hope. The arching wooden beams are a unique feature of this gym that are admired and remembered by all who have watched or played a game here. They look almost as perfect and new as when the gym opened in 1952.
“A little town like ours,” said 82-year-old Lloyd Brick, a lifelong Medaryville resident, “had never seen nothing like this. A beautiful place. Real beautiful.”
Brick can remember the Medaryville gym under construction in the early 1950s. It was built directly behind the brick schoolhouse that had been there since 1921. The school housed a small gymnasium that was essentially a concrete box later converted to a cafeteria when the new gym was ready.
Hughie Sams, a 1956 Medaryville graduate, was about to enter high school when the new gymnasium was completed. He kept tabs on the construction, watching through his classroom windows in the school.
“I thought it was magnificent,” said the 87-year-old Sams, who graduated with a class of 21 students and played basketball all four years of high school. “It was state of the art at that time by far, especially with rounded dome. I thought that was pretty great.”
The gym, which had classrooms under it for home economics classes and the first and second grades, became the center of the community in the 1950s and ‘60s. Not only was it the place to be on Friday nights for high school basketball but it hosted sock hops, proms and graduations.
Aileen Steele (maiden name Siemens) was a Medaryville Black Horse cheerleader, along many other roles as a class officer, drum major and singer in the choir. Steele has great memories of dancing in the sock hops in her bare feet to protect the gym floor and watching as one of classmates blasted the fire extinguisher through the hole of the “volcano” they had built for the Hawaiian-themed prom.
She played basketball, too. But those were the prehistoric intramural days of girls basketball when the rules only allowed girls to play half court and take two dribbles before passing.
“I walked in (the gym) today and was always amazed at the curved wooden arches,” Steele said. “I think everyone always commented when they would come join us from other school about the condition of the gym and how precious it was. I remember a lot of days where I’d have to change out of my cheerleading uniform so I could go twirl a baton and then put my cheerleading uniform back on and get out on the floor.”
Her husband, Max Steele, played basketball at Medaryville and graduated in 1962. They married in 1966 and lived together outside Medaryville on their family farm until Max died in 2019. As her graduating class prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary, Steele is still brought to tears when she thinks back to a tragedy that occurred just down the road from the gym on Highway 421 between Medaryville and Francesville.
Jesse Alva, Jim Dunn and Larry Fritz, three of the six basketball seniors on the 1964-65 Medaryville team, were killed in a head-on collision on the night of Dec. 28, 1965. Richard Tyler, driving the other car, and a close friend of the other three, also died. All four were just 18 years old. All four were wearing their basketball letter jackets. Tyler was a 1965 graduate of Francesville.
“We lost all four of them,” Steele said. “I still can’t get over it.”
Medaryville had its share of basketball success over the years but were never able to win a sectional title. The 1952 team came close. That group won the Pulaski County tournament but after knocking off Monterey, Kewanna and Fulton in the sectional, the Black Horses lost to host Winamac 50-44 for the sectional title.
Bill Shortz was a young boy about to start elementary school around that time. His grandfather, Ralph Harris, was the principal at Medaryville for nearly two decades and his father, Elmer Shortz, the custodian. Those family connections placed young Shortz in the gym at Medaryville for long hours.
“I worked alongside my dad, cleaning and polishing the floor before each ballgame,” Shortz said. “It was kind of a tradition that everybody in town and in the country would come in on Friday nights and watch a game. There were two or three of us that always sat behind the team, and we kept (statistics). We were part of the team, even at that age.”
Shortz moved away when he was 12 or 13 when his father took a job on the maintenance staff at Zionsville. But he never lost his connection to Medaryville and those memories of the hours he spent helping his father.
“When the season was over, we would come in and strip the gymnasium floor and put new sealer on it,” he said. “That took two weeks. There was a lot of work on that.”
Considering now much time and care the community took in the gym, Gary Siemens said it was “depressing” to see how it looks today. Until a visit this spring, Siemens said he had not set foot in the gym for about 40 years. His father, Leo Siemens, was the township trustee when Gary was growing up, giving him access to the gym.
“I spent a lot of extra time in here,” Siemens said. “(My dad) had a key, so I’d come in on weekends and practice.”
Siemens, who graduated from high school in 1968, had 31 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists at a home game in the Medaryville gym. Siemens played on the last Medaryville team in 1966-67. The Black Horses finished 8-12. The next year, old rivals Medaryville and Francesville, the Black Horses and Zebras, consolidated to form West Central.
For the first two years of the consolidation, West Central played its home games in the Medaryville gym. The only thing about the gym that changed was the “WC” painted at midcourt that still remains today. Lonnie Steele, who had played at Medaryville, moved from coach to athletic director when the schools consolidated. Ray Ferdinand was hired as coach.
“It wasn’t that different,” Siemens said. “The coach had some different ideas, and we ran different offenses. It took some time to learn those.”
When the new school and gym facilities were completely equidistant between Francesville and Medaryville in 1970, the school sold the old gym and school to the owner of the Medaryville Lumber Co. In 1976, the school building was torn down. But the gym remained, coming into the ownership of the local American Legion, which used part of the classroom space for meetings and a bar. The gym was used intermittently for functions over the years but eventually fell into its current state. The American Legion moved out in recent months.
“It’s a shame that things have gotten the way they’ve got,” Brick said. “You know, you take the school out of the community, and you lose everything. That’s the way I feel about it. To let it deteriorate the way it has is a damn shame.”
But there is hope that it is not too late to save the Medaryville gym and help give it a second life. Morgan Federer, a graduate of West Central with deep roots in Pulaski County, has devoted hours of volunteer time to the West Central youth baseball league, which has a field just to the south of the Medaryville gym, along with putting her efforts into several other causes in the area.
“It would mean a lot to this community,” said 1966 Medaryville graduate Gene Payne, who has worked with Federer in recent months to uncover avenues for financial upgrades. “This whole area, really. This young lady (Federer) has done all this (with the baseball field) where you drive into Medaryville and say, ‘This looks great.’ That’s what she’s working toward here and I’m willing to help her. She’s doing a great job.”
There is no shortage of hope. But those who remember the Medaryville gym as the center of the community are getting older. Their hope is to give a new generation something they can remember, too.
“I walked in here when I was 5 years old for the first time with my dad,” Craig Stevens said. “Little did I know it was the beginning of my basketball life. I walk in here now and I get a little shiver down my back. It’s special. With Morgan spearheading this, I see nothing but good things. It’s not going to happen overnight because it didn’t get in this shape overnight. But with dedication and getting more people back involved, I can see life coming back to this facility. I really do.”
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 270-4904. Get IndyStar’s high school coverage sent directly to your inbox with the High School Sports newsletter.
NOTE: The ‘Friends of the Medaryville Gymnasium’ group has incorporated with the state and applied for nonprofit status. The group is accepting tax exempt donations through the Community Foundation of Pulaski County. Donations can be made by check to the Community Foundation of Pulaski County (note ‘Medaryville Gym’ on check) or online at cfopc.org/donate (click ‘give online’ and search for Medaryville Gym). To discuss a major gift, memorial donation, or in-kind contribution, contact the Community Foundation at 574-946-0906 or email Leeann Wright at lwright@cfopc.org. For more, follow the ‘Friends of the Medaryville Gymnasium’ on Facebook.