It's just a building.
It's a building, however, that for the last 72 years has housed the heart and soul of the Ogden High student body, fondly referred to as "the old gym" now that a new building is under construction.
"It's a beautiful old gym," said former boys basketball coach Dick Rice, who coached from 1983 to 1986. "It was built during the Depression to give people work."
That work project created a gathering place, not just for students and teachers of Ogden High, but for the entire community.
Pep rallies, assemblies, basketball and volleyball games, practices for drill teams, basketball teams, volleyball teams and even baseball teams found a home on the slightly yellowing hardwood.
"A lot of memories here," said Ogden track and cross country coach Don Hall, who announced the final boys game against Morgan Wednesday. "This one has seen a lot over the 72 years."
Like most things nowadays, it's a building that will be recycled. Instead of games and get-togethers, it will find new life as science labs and classrooms.
A little nostalgia went a long way as the Ogden High community, including hundreds of Ogden alumni, turned out Wednesday night to give the old home court a proper send-off.
"It's a wonderful place," said the school's first girls basketball coach and an Ogden graduate, Marta Aardema-Giles, who coached some of her former classmates in 1972 while she played at Weber State. "The girls wanted to play, and they needed a coach. It wasn't sanctioned, we just came later in the evening after the boys were done. We just worked around their schedule."
Without a league to play in, the squad just picked up games here and there, including quite a few with the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City. Aardema-Giles' cousin was the coach of that team, and both groups were always up for an extra game or two. Besides, it would be a shame to let a gym like that sit empty on a winter afternoon.
Aardema-Giles, Rice and most of the other coaches who called the gym home came out Wednesday to accept a plaque, standing ovation and a little thank-you from the Ogden High community. Even 92-year-old Monte Bailey, a baseball coach from 1947 to 1954, said his team used the gym for a little preseason practice.
"It was really quite fun," Aardema-Giles said of being back in the old building. "It brought back a lot of memories — of coaching and being a student."
As was the case with most of the former coaches and players, Aardema-Giles' fondest memories are of fairly ordinary events.
"Just wearing out T-shirts and taping our numbers on with electrical tape," she said with a little laugh. "We didn't even have uniforms, but it was way fun."
The first basketball state championships were held in 1975-76. Ogden High won the title in 1979 under the guidance of the Tigers' current head coach, Phil Russell, who has been at the helm of the program for 36 seasons. Even he is blown away by the realization that he's been teaching hoops in that building for half of its storied life.
"Before the Bear River game last week I was telling the girls, 'You realize this is the last girls basketball game that will be played in this gym,' " he said. "Then I started to wail. I thought, 'Geez, I've lost it!' And then I looked at those girls and they were tearing up."
Russell has a long list of memorable moments in the Tigers' gym. One includes a come-from-behind victory made possible by a half-court shot at the buzzer, while another featured a handicapped player from cross-town rival Ben Lomond who entered the game in the final minutes only to have both teams — and even the officials try to give her the special memory of scoring in a varsity game.
Everyone knows it's just a building, but they all acknowledge it's the history that was made, the fun that was had and the opponents who were heckled that make it tough to see the turning of a page.
Coach Rice, wearing his letter sweater and waving his souvenir towel, summed up the feelings of a lot of folks milling around the gym long after the game Wednesday night, when he turned to his companion and said, "I'm going to miss this old gym. A lot of memories here."
It's bricks, wood, bleachers and a couple of hoops. For a few hours a day it was the gathering place, the happening, hopping, hard-to-carry-on-a-conversations hot spot.
"When it comes right down to it, the kids are the special part," said Rice, breaking into a wide smile.
Which gives everyone at Ogden High hopes for the shiny, new gym, which may be lacking in history but will be loaded with the expectations of the Tiger student body. Without those teenagers, laughing and yelling or dancing and playing, it is, after all, just a building.
E-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com