Did you know that W&M basketball used to play in BLOW HALL (formerly Blow Gymnasium)? In fact, W&M played 45 SEASONS in Blow Gymnasium before moving to Kaplan Arena in 1970. In our most recent article, we uncover the history behind what was Blow Gym (with pictures!), and look ahead to W&M Basketball's future home, as outlined in the 2015 Tribe Athletics' 10-Year Plan.


Article: https://wmsportsblog.com/2018/05/14/did-...blow-hall/

All right.

First, thanks for all that you do! I mean that sincerely.

Second, your article amply illustrates the epic fail that is our Athletic Department, and any attempt to preserve, teach, and pass on the rich history of Tribe athletics.

Third, Swem has no pictures of a basketball game at Blow? What does that say?

Fourth, to get you started, Blow Gym was a snake pit, and teams hated to play the Indians in that place. A true home court advantage. The basketball nets were attached to the second floor bleachers. Guess what happened when free throws were being shot by the other team?

Fifth, I'm showing my age, and I'm only 59. I thought everyone knew this stuff.

Sixth, the indoor soccer marathon was held in the place.

Seventh, intramural volleyball and hoops were held there.

Eighth, there was a suspended indoor track at the second level.

Ninth, numerous pick-up basketball games were played there. Our frat had a North vs. South game there on a Friday night as the first part of a double-header; the second "game" was a frat party.

(05-14-2018 07:21 PM)nj alum Wrote:  All right.

First, thanks for all that you do! I mean that sincerely.

Second, your article amply illustrates the epic fail that is our Athletic Department, and any attempt to preserve, teach, and pass on the rich history of Tribe athletics.

Third, Swem has no pictures of a basketball game at Blow? What does that say?

Fourth, to get you started, Blow Gym was a snake pit, and teams hated to play the Indians in that place. A true home court advantage. The basketball nets were attached to the second floor bleachers. Guess what happened when free throws were being shot by the other team?

Fifth, I'm showing my age, and I'm only 59. I thought everyone knew this stuff.

Sixth, the indoor soccer marathon was held in the place.

Seventh, intramural volleyball and hoops were held there.

Eighth, there was a suspended indoor track at the second level.

Ninth, numerous pick-up basketball games were played there. Our frat had a North vs. South game there on a Friday night as the first part of a double-header; the second "game" was a frat party.

And the swimming pool in the basement as well as handball courts.

Theoretically, a renovation of the Hall would include some large historical achievement mini-museum showing the history of bball and Blow Hall. Could probably be done with some large concourse banners in the meantime, since we are probably nowhere close to an actual refurb.

I'm a little disappointed nobody has posted the story of a player (can't remember who off-hand) making a layup in Blow Gym, going out the double doors and around the outside then coming in the double doors under the other basket to play defense.

No story about Blow Gym could possibly be complete without the famous quote by Lefty Driesell. Lefty was the coach at Davidson, one of our rivals in the old Southern Conference. When Lefty got hired as the coach at Maryland, a reporter asked him what was the best thing about the promotion. His answer was that the best part of it was that he would never again have to play another game in Blow Gym.

It isn't correct that there are no photos of basketball at Blow Gym in the library. For one thing they have a complete collection of W&M annual class yearbooks. Every yearbook from years Blow Gym operated as our home basketball court has game photos in the basketball section easily available to the researcher. As does the complete library of Flathats. The annual printed W&M Basketball Press Guides (when colleges used to print them since the Internet didn't exist) also have many photos and are available.

other unique facts about the basketball at Blow:

*many of the football players would to stand at one end of the floor directly behind the basket (there were no seats there) at the end closest to downtown...in critical moments when opposition players would drive to the basket their momentum would carry them into the standing W&M football players who would grab the guy, hold him, and sometimes pass him out the door, giving W&M, in essence, a 5 on 4 break if the unfortunate opponent had missed his shot and we had rebounded.

*Both teams actually sat in the stands with the fans in the early days right into the 60s, separated from the crowd by a flimsy rope. Imagine how this worked with visiting teams with mainly students sitting literally right next to them.

*Blow Gym had steam heat. On many game nights the entire arena was like a sauna with the steam going full blast...

*In the early days through the sixties, with student bodies under 2000, the entire student body would jam into the place which held perhaps 2300. Students would watch the game from the high running track
atop the structure.

*A perusal of old yearbooks shows all the proms and big dances were held there with big name bands
at most of them....

*The Athletic Department offices were also in old Blow Gym, crammed into a small section facing Richmond Road. That's every one: coaches, athletic director, secretaries, business manager. Sounds like a lot, but until the 1970s there were only football, basketball, track & field, swimming, x-country and
baseball with no women's teams and a few assistants for football (usually three fulltime who also taught classes as did many of the other sports coaches) and basketball (usually one graduate student) and none for other sports. The trainer was also the track coach and his one part-time assistant worked full-time for the Williamsburg Rescue Squad and did game taping. The business manager also handled ticket sales;
and the sports information director for many years was a series of students.

(05-14-2018 07:21 PM)nj alum Wrote:  All right.

First, thanks for all that you do! I mean that sincerely.

Second, your article amply illustrates the epic fail that is our Athletic Department, and any attempt to preserve, teach, and pass on the rich history of Tribe athletics.

Third, Swem has no pictures of a basketball game at Blow? What does that say?

Fourth, to get you started, Blow Gym was a snake pit, and teams hated to play the Indians in that place. A true home court advantage. The basketball nets were attached to the second floor bleachers. Guess what happened when free throws were being shot by the other team?

Fifth, I'm showing my age, and I'm only 59. I thought everyone knew this stuff.

Sixth, the indoor soccer marathon was held in the place.

Seventh, intramural volleyball and hoops were held there.

Eighth, there was a suspended indoor track at the second level.

Ninth, numerous pick-up basketball games were played there. Our frat had a North vs. South game there on a Friday night as the first part of a double-header; the second "game" was a frat party.

In the mid 70s pick-up basketball games were popular enough that you needed to be a good free throw shooter to play - first 5 to make to play the team that had just won..

I had always heard this video was filmed in Blow Gym before it was converted to Blow Memorial Hall. I'm sure someone on here can confirm or dispute that fact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfKIq1Pmc8Q

Bonus question - can anyone name the football players in the video? (Hint - at least 3 are not wearing their actual jersey numbers)

The article brought many memories. For many years the ROTC departnment, offices, and a classroom were in Blow Gym.

Opening sequence is definitely Blow. No idea about the players but Patton Oswalt is in the video. Another terrible BH song but that's just the way it is - some things will never change.

When I was an undergrad there was a wall-sized photo collage in the Sadler Center, and one of the photos was from a basketball game in Blow Hall (against VPI if I recall). I love the jam-packed seating and the visible colonial motifs; talk about a unique and memorable venue!

The trend at some large schools has been to refurbish and use the "old" gym for women's hoops, volleyball, wrestling, etc. plus an annual men's hoops game in the old barn for nostalgia's sake. I'm thinking of Carmichael at UNC and Rec Hall at Penn State, to name a few.

It would be awesome if we could rip out the administrative offices and classrooms now occupying Blow (it's currently a split-level labyrinthine catastrophe that doesn't use the space well anyway) and bring back the gym. Doing so would require some extensive redesigns to pull everything up to standards, but the "bones" of the building and its history are so unmistakably cool it's a shame to waste them.

Meanwhile, the master plan notes the need for "an appealing 3,000 seat venue." But that's none of my business.

I clearly remember meeting Milt Drewer in his office upstairs at Blow Gym as well as throwing up just outside the indoor pool during swim classes. The whole place was a genuine dump, although most of the inhabitants didn’t realize it. It wasn’t alone though. John Wooden, prior to Pauley Pavilion coached the Bruins in the BO Barn for years.

I had 3 semesters of PE basketball at the Hall under Parkhill in the mid-70s (yes, the top assistant taught PE back then - then again he ended up marrying one of my classmates) but intramural ball at Blow was where my heart was.

Between eliminating the courts at Blow and tearing down Lodge 16, I get the feeling the College is trying to dump me.

Played many games with Hornsby and Molo in Blow. Parkhill, also, was the instructor for the required swimming class. Can remember baseball coach Ed Jones building his sauna in the Blow basement.

W&M campus bus drivers would stop in front of Blow to go take their pee breaks and leave the buses running. Scored a lot of points in my fraternity pledge scavenger hunt when I took advantage of that and confiscated the bus and drove it behind fraternity row. Back then it was just accepted/understood as a student prank in fun by school employees. Today I'm sure I'd have faced court charges and expulsion....sigh.

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We played North Carolina at Blow Gym in the year UNC went undefeated and defeated Wilt Chamberlain and Kansas in triple OT in the NCAA Championship, in 1957 I believe. Lenny Rosenbluth was UNC's unanimous All-American and Joe Quigg was a great 6-9 center for them.

The only game UNC trailed at the half was their game at Blow and the game was nip and tuck right to the end where they hit some late foul shots to win by eight points. Rosenbluth was held to his season low,
just nine points. UNC's coach was the great Frank McGuire and he said after the game that he would
never bring a team to Blow Gym ever again...and I don't believe he ever did again. He railed about having to sit with his team in the stands with the students.

Some W&M players in that game were team captain Jim Kaplan (of Kaplan Arena fame), Don Engelken (a set shot expert), and Bill Ouseley (who later became nationally known for infiltrating and breaking up the Mafia in Kansas City while an undercover agent for the FBI and is in the FBI Hall of Fame). All three were from the Northeast: Kaplan from Windber, PA, Engelken from North Jersey, and Ouseley from the Bronx, NY. I guess we recruited heavily from that area back then.

W&M coach of that team, by the way, was Boydson "Boyd" Baird.

All this info readily found years ago researching an article at the W&M Library's great collection of every Flathat that they have on both microfilm and actual binders.

Yeah, don't worry too much about resurrecting Blow. It was a dump, pure and simple. If you brought it back to what it looked like in the late 1960's, it'd still be a dump.

Maybe it was state of the art, during the Roaring Twenties, when it was built or after the refurbish, in the early 1950's, but when I got there (the last season before The Hall opened), it was a true "Pit".

Now, that being said, it was a fun pit! Seriously, people DID grab opponents ankles, if they got too deep into the corner, trying to make them stumble and get a travelling call. Referees would tell you to keep your arms back when the opponent was trying to inbound the ball and not pull on their shorts. I definitely heard about shots being blocked away...by someone in the upper deck, in the front row behind the basket. Most of these "doings" took place in the far end, with the second story seating. It really was too close to the court. It was dark, the bleachers were hard, and it was occasionally too hot, but it was fun, packed to capacity,... and loud.

I also remember running many a lap on the upstairs track for baseball workouts in February (talk about boring...) and I had a swimming class in the basement (talk about hot...).

I don't know about students running the SID office in the 60's, but by the 1970's Bob Sheeran was in charge and doing a great job.


But, enough of "Back in my Day..."

I remember reading an old interview with Lefty Driesell where he alleged W&M players used to burn opposing players with cigars. Completely unsubstantiated I'm sure.

Anyway I've always regretted the fact that the basketball team moved out of Blow. I get why it had to happen but I think a renovated Blow Gym wouls be one of the most unique venues in the nation.

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Blow gym was a unique dump then and would be so again if renovated. I enjoyed intramural ball there and also had a couple of semesters of Bball with Bruce Parkhill in the early 70's.

Two courts were there. The one definitely had dead spots in the floor. It was fun to try and navigate an opponents dribble into one. The side where I believe games were played was slightly better.

Somewhat it reminded me of playing in the armory in Clifton Forge, VA that doubles as the old CFHS gym back in the day.

(05-15-2018 12:47 PM)LeadBolt Wrote:  Two courts were there. The one definitely had dead spots in the floor. It was fun to try and navigate an opponents dribble into one. The side where I believe games were played was slightly better.

That matches what I remember. Let's see if I can get this right after all these years -- two courts in a T configuration, with a removable (folding?) wall between them. The team's games were played in the back gym farthest from Richmond Road -- that is, the crossbar of the T. I believe that for games, the movable wall was opened up and bleachers were set up on that side, and I think the teams both sat on that side.

The Bruce Hornsby video looks like it was filmed in the "front" gym -- the stem of the T. Where you can see a basketball hoop in the background, with a dark wall behind it, I think that's the movable wall.

Back in the day, I think W&M also played a few home games at the then-new Hampton Roads Coliseum (now Hampton Coliseum). The "Big 5" tournament was played there as well.

I remember that I missed the last game ever played at Blow -- against VMI, I think. A few games had already been played at the new W&M Hall (now the Kap), and my parents wouldn't believe me when I told them there was a game that night.