By Gary Spurgeon
Publisher 

In covering the Davis County-Pella Christian Regional Tournament girls’ basketball game, I got my first look in several years at Evans Junior High Gym in Ottumwa.

The gym was once the indoor athletic envy of southeast Iowa. It’s showing its age, probably about 50 years. There have been a lot of basketball games, wrestling meets and other events watched by thousands of people there.

The first thing that struck me when I entered the doors was that it was dim. People carrying cameras almost always notice that. “When are they going to turn on the lights?” I asked myself, looking up only to discover they were on.

When I looked around, I generally concluded that a somewhat junky venue hadn’t been taken care nor kept as clean as it might have been. Later I wandered into the concession area, which is also a gym sans seats. What a difference new or newer makes. It was bright, shiny and inviting. That’s good for a concession area, but also a gym.

I’m saying this not to run down Ottumwa, the Ottumwa Community School District or the people who take care of the facility, but to compliment, in contrast, the care the Davis County High School Gym has received over the years.

The Davis County Gym is a good 20 years older than Evans, but its lighting is better, it’s shinier and, maybe, even cleaner. The Davis County Gym has outlasted almost all of its contemporaries. It has its problems, the biggest of which are the two steel posts in the middle of each side that restrict vision. Don’t get me wrong, the gym is old and we can’t expect it to last forever, and, based on the school’s current building program, it’s going to be a few more years before a new gym will be built.

Often, when people, especially those against building new schools, talk, they say, “We wouldn’t need a new school if they would have taken care of the old one.”

The Davis County High School Gym is old, visiting teams hate to come here and play, it has horrible acoustics and it has support posts. It, however, is well kept and is not even close to the embarrassment that it could be. Those people who have been involved in taking care of it have done a great job.