Hardwood floors Continued..........


      Often times, when high schools first decided to form teams, it was tough finding a building large enough to accommodate basketball, leading to rules being bent.
      Larry Scott has been MSUM’s sports information director for 33 years, observing more than his share of games. One court sticks out in his mind: “In Alexandria, they had no out-of-bounds,” Scott said. “The ball was inbounded a few feet in-bounds.”
      Otto remembers a similar experience in an old gym in Ulen.
      “In Ulen, you had to cross the half-line, but the over-and-back line went back a few feet from that,” Otto said. “They had a real small floor.”
      Dan Haglund, a MSUM alumnus and a former basketball player at Lake of the Woods High in Baudette, MN, played in many of the intriguing gyms in the northern Minnesota.
      “The one in Williams [MN] was the largest all-wooden structure in the state of Minnesota,” said Haglund, who currently works as a copy editor for The Forum, a newspaper in Fargo. “Dusty floor, slippery floor. There were windows everywhere. It was really light, and hard to see the ball sometimes.”
      While many of these gyms have since been torn down, or rendered useless, the memories of these elapsed palaces of hoops will live on if only in the minds of those who experienced them.

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RELATED STORY: Memories of the “old gym”


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