Stagg High School’s North Gym
Named the North Gym because that’s the location of the gym compared to the school’s other gym, it is where varsity games are played.
A typical two-tiered gym, its most notable features is the wild horses mural painted on the north baseline wall. Similarly styled to murals at Lyons Township, and Shepard.
September 2024 was my first ever visit to the gym. Although I have covered numerous other sports there, a home volleyball or basketball has never been assigned to me before the.
I don’t have the exact numbers for seating capacity, but from a quick seat count the lower level holds about 1,100. There are another 7-rows of bleachers in the upper section, putting that total probably around 1,600 seated. The school opened in 1964 and it’s very possible this gym was built then.
Amos Alonzo Stagg’s coached the world’s first-ever high school basketball team.
No, Stagg High School did not have the world’s first-ever high school basketball team. Remember they were founded in 1964. Basketball had already been around for over-80 years at that point. Stagg however was at the Springfield, Massachusetts YMCA along side James Naismith, when Naismith invented the game in 1891. Soon after Stagg took a job with a new college called the University of Chicago, where he most famously coached the school’s football, but also taught and coached at the university’s prep school Morgan Park Academy.
Stagg brought with him the game of basketball and in 1893 organized a team at Morgan Park Academy. While local YMCA had teams for teens, Morgan Park Academy is recognized as the first team to be associated with a high school.
You can see photos of their gym, one of the oldest in Illinois, and read more about them on the Morgan Park Academy Bitta Gym page.
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