Bucknell University Athletics
John Feinstein Reflects on the Spirit of Davis Gym
1/16/2003 7:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 16, 2003
By JOHN FEINSTEIN
AOL Exclusive
There were playoff football games going on throughout this past weekend, not to mention the usual spate of NBA and NHL games and the hundreds and hundreds of college basketball games that take place on a January weekend.
The NFL, as always, drew the most attention even if only one of the games had any suspense in the final moments. (Home team records to date this postseason: 7-1.)
There were plenty of sold-out arenas across the country, whether they were in Philadelphia, where the red-hot Flyers met the defending Stanley Cup champion Red Wings, in College Park, where defending national champion Maryland was crushing Florida State, or in Durham, where college basketball's final two unbeaten teams played in one of those awful made-for TV Sunday night games that are a plague on humanity. That too was a blowout.
The sweetest place to be in sports this past weekend was a rickety old bandbox gym in central Pennsylvania, where, on a frigid afternoon, a couple of thousand folks said farewell to an old friend.
Davis Gym has been a part of the pretty landscape that is Bucknell University since 1939. It is one of the last true gyms left in college athletics, a 2,300-seat gem in which the worst seat is a good seat because you feel as if you can stretch your arms out and touch the players.
Bucknell has never been thought of as a college basketball power and never will be. That doesn't mean that Davis hasn't been a special place. To those who played in it, coached in it, spectated in it, the memories will always be warm even though most nights, when full, the place was unbearably hot.
"The steam bath," Bucknell coach Pat Flannery lovingly called it, the kind of home court visitors despise because it was always uncomfortable, from the walk through a public hallway to the lobby, to the packed court where the home team won 64 percent of the time dating back to the opening game which -- poetically enough -- was 64 years ago.
"The big-time teams always hated to come in and play us," coach Charlie Woollum said during Davis' final moments as an active basketball arena Saturday. "No one would come play us here except Temple, LaSalle and St. Joseph's; they had to because they were in our league (the old ECC). I can remember LaSalle coming in with Michael Brooks years ago and we whipped them when they were ranked about No. 8. Now that was fun."
Woollum's era at Bucknell -- which stretched from 1975 until 1993 -- was the best in the school's history. He succeeded an ambitious young coach named Jim Valvano, who went on to fame and fortune at Iona and North Carolina State. Woollum steered Bucknell to 318 victories and two NCAA Tournament appearances, not to mention nights like the one against LaSalle in the old steam bath.
"We had 3,000 people in here some nights," Woollum said. "I can't tell you how many times the fire department came in here and threatened to shut us down."
One of the players Woollum recruited to Bucknell was a high-strung little guard from Pottsville named Pat Flannery who zipped around the court with so much intensity and enthusiasm that they called him "Scooter." When Woollum headed south to finish his career in a warmer climate (William & Mary), Scooter Flannery succeeded him.
Nearly 10 years later, Flannery is as wound-up as he's ever been, always high-strung and always full of hope even though Bucknell has come close to winning its current league, the Patriot League, without quite getting it done.
But things are changing. This week, Bucknell will move into a gorgeous new building, the Sojka Pavilion. The new place -- which is right next to the old -- will seat 4,000, the perfect size for a school like Bucknell and the last coats of paint were being applied -- literally -- while Davis' doors were being opened to the public one last time. Woollum spent a good part of the day reminding many of his old players, who came back for the occasion, that he had promised them a new gym and he had now kept his promise.
"But coach," several pointed out, "We're all in our 40s!"
"I didn't say WHEN," Woollum said. "I just said it would happen."
The new arena -- it is far too nice to call a gym -- isn't the only thing that is new at Bucknell. Last summer, the board of trustees voted to give scholarships to basketball players, meaning the program now will be on more even footing with Holy Cross, Lehigh, Army, Navy and American, which all have scholarship athletes in the Patriot League. Only Lafayette and Colgate remain holdouts on the scholarship issue and the chances are good that alumni pressure will force them to follow suit someday soon.
Fittingly, the opponent on the final afternoon was American, since it was AU that was the opponent for the first game in Davis all those years ago. And, because sometimes sports gets the script right, Bucknell played one of its best games of the season, leading almost the entire way, winning, 63-52. Because AU coach Jeff Jones is one of the college game's class people, he backed his team off during the last 20 seconds, knowing it wasn't his day and let the fans enjoy counting down the final seconds in the old place.
There was, as you might expect, a bittersweet feeling as those final seconds disappeared. Flannery has been hearing about a new place to play since Woollum promised HIM that Davis would be replaced 25 years ago and he knows, as everyone at Bucknell knows, that this is something that had to happen; something the school needs to have happen.
"There's not a dead spot on this floor I don't know," he told the crowd during the closing ceremony after the game. "There's not a door, not a window I don't know. I'll miss coming in here, I've spent so much of my life here. I can close my eyes right now and know where most of you are sitting. But the important thing is, we'll all have the memories and all of you will come to the new place right along with us."
They will and they will bring their memories of Davis with them, the wins and the losses, but perhaps most importantly of the kids who played there and went on to make Bucknell proud after they graduated. Many of them were back Saturday, bringing kids of their own and, of course the memories and stories that are part of being both an athlete and an ex-athlete.
Of course new arenas are all the rage in sports today. Most are built because the old buildings lack luxury boxes and corporate seating. Almost all have some corporate name slapped on them even before they open their doors. There are now college basketball arenas named for companies that make donuts and hamburgers and companies that sell tools and cable TV subscriptions.
At Bucknell, they will leave Davis Gym behind to play in an arena named for Dr. Gary Sojka. Sojka doesn't sell anything. He is a past president of the school who still teaches biology.
A basketball arena named after a teacher. Imagine that. A team of true students playing in a place named for a teacher. Davis Gym might be closed, but the traditions it stood for are still very much alive at Bucknell.
