Bill Wade, Post-Gazette Wilkinsburg huddles before its game against West Greene in the upstairs gym built in 1929.

By Rich Emert, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

They have as much character as the senior citizens who sit in their seats and tell wonderful stories.

And, like the guys in their 70s and 80s who relate those tales, they are a vanishing breed.

There just aren't many of the old high school gymnasiums that were built in the 1920s and '30s still in use as varsity facilities. They have gone the way of two-handed set shots, knee-high jumping socks, underhand free throws and officials calling players for "palming" the basketball.

Some of the old high school gyms are now being used by elementary or middle school athletes, replaced by more modern facilities. Many have been demolished or converted into apartments. Some are recreation centers.

Fortunately, there are a few still in use. Wilkinsburg continues to play its games on a court on the third floor of the high school. It's construction dates to the late 1920s.

McKeesport plays varsity contests at Neenie Campbell Memorial Gym in Founders' Hall. It opened to fans in the mid 1920s.

Beaver Falls plays boys' varsity games at its middle school gym -- the town's old high school building -- that dates to 1932. That's the same year Washington High School's gym opened.

And North Catholic, according to former coach Don Graham, started playing games "on the stage" at the Troy Hill school in 1939.

All are unique facilities filled with ghosts of great players and stories of Western Pennsylvania's rich high school basketball tradition. They were and still are intimidating places for opposing teams to play, providing a true home-court advantage.

"It was fun to watch teams come in who had never been there before," said former Wilkinsburg High coach Art Griffiths, who was the head coach at the school for 12 years. "The players would turn right and start up the stairs and when they got to the next landing you'd see them looking back at each other. They couldn't believe there was a gym up there."

Adding to Wilkinsburg's home-court edge is the fact the court, by today's standards, is short and narrow. There are balconies on either side for fans, giving it a Roman coliseum feel. The place seats only about 500.

"When I played here in the late 1980s, we always won home games," current Wilkinsburg coach Heath Bailey said. "I know some teams are terrified when they are walking up those stairs for the first time."

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette The steps leading up to Wilkinsburg's third-floor gymnasium have not been a stairway to heaven for visiting teams. Click photo for larger image.

When a new high school was constructed in Beaver Falls in the late 1970s it was decided varsity games would continue to be played at the old gym, which seats about 1,350 and used to be the home court for Geneva College until its field house was built in 1962.

Like Wilkinsburg, the Beaver Falls gym can be an intimidating place for visitors. It is in the middle of the building and fans enter at the top of the stands with the floor eight rows below, giving the place the feel of a football arena.

Adding to the intimidation factor are the photos on the walls above the stands of all the section, WPIAL and PIAA championship teams the school has produced. Joe Namath, the school's most famous graduate, has signed one photo.

"You'll see varsity players from other teams up looking at the pictures during JV games," Beaver Falls coach Doug Biega said. "When you walk into the gym at the top of the stands and look down at the court, especially when the place is filled, you get goose bumps."

What's unique about the Beaver Falls gym and Neenie Campbell Memorial Gym in McKeesport is their size. The courts are big and, unlike many gyms built in that era, easily accommodate 3-point lines.

"Our gym is functionally nostalgic," Biega said. "The only thing I wish is that the ceiling was a little higher. I don't know how many times players from opposing teams have hit the ceiling trying to make a real long shot at the end of a quarter."

Graham, who is 82 and coached at North Catholic for more than 50 years, remembers going to McKeesport to watch a Duquesne University game when Chuck Cooper played for the Dukes.

"It was the place because of its size," he said. "Back then, Duquesne still played in that little place on the bluff, and Pitt was playing under the stands at the stadium."

McKeesport coach Corey Gadson said he has old-timers tell him stories about games and individuals who have played at Neenie Campbell. He said the gym has had a face-lift in recent years, but is basically the same.

"The place is so spacious that the kids at the other end of the court can't hear me during practices when I talk normal," Gadson said.

"I can remember playing on the stage at Clairton, over at Braddock Scott, which used to be a swimming pool, and in the basement at Duquesne. Our place is huge compared to what those places were like."

North Catholic's court, when it was first built, was of decent size and was on the stage in the auditorium. The court has since been extended into what was part of the seating area and turned, so that now one basket is against a wall -- what used to be the back of the stage -- and the other is on the open end.

"We had probably as big a high school gym as there was around when it opened because they made the stage so big," Graham said.

Washington High School's gym was also home for a number of years to a college team. Washington & Jefferson played home games there until the early 1960s. And Washington High had something else most gyms, other than North Catholic, didn't and don't have ... theater-style seats.

"We renovated the gym in 1985 and took the seats out individually and had them sent away to be refinished," said Ron Faust, Washington's coach and athletic director.

"Bill Laughlin, who was the coach here in the 1950s and '60s, played at W&J and played against Red Auerbach when he was at George Washington at our place."

The court at Washington High is decent size and just wide enough to accommodate 3-point lines.

"Yeah, they go all the way to the baseline," Faust said. "If you wear a size 12 and shoot from the corner you're OK, but I don't know if a size 13 will fit."

The gym also has another claim to fame.

Washington and Greene counties have always been hotbeds for high school wrestling, and in 1950 the PIAA wrestling championships took place at the high school gym.

"I don't know of any other place that can boast that," Faust said.