End game: Clock winding down on old La Conner gym

Time is running out on an iconic La Conner sports arena.

Contractors have begun demolition of the old school gym, built by volunteers nearly 70 years ago, and site of countless epic games and events from basketball buzzer beaters to community Halloween parties to the festive flower show that morphed into today’s Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

The landmark building is coming down as part of a new middle school construction project under way on the local campus.

But because of lasting public sentiment and lifelong memories attached to it, designers and district officials have taken steps to incorporate parts of the old gym into the adjacent new middle school.

The section of floor bearing the gym’s “LC” logo has been lifted and will be mounted on a wall in the new facility’s multi-events center. Other portions of the floor have been salvaged for use as table tops.

“For a while we were hearing that for different reasons we probably wouldn’t be able to save the old gym floor,” La Conner Superintendent of Schools Tim Bruce said Monday. “But if that was going to be the case, Brian (Hedlund) and I were ready to come down late one night and cut it out ourselves.”

Had that happened, it would have seemed fitting given the gym’s unique Do-It-Yourself legacy.

The story begins in 1947. The Braves were coming off a 7th Place finish at the State Tournament and were returning the nucleus of their team, including top scorer and future college athlete Landy James.

Local lore has it, in an account shared across time and by many La Conner families, that support steadily grew for construction of a gymnasium here large enough for fans from far and wide to watch James and his superb supporting cast play in 1948.

Up until then, the team played its home games in what is now the school auditorium.

That posed some problems.

“It was very small,” recalls Gail Thulen, who would make his own indelible mark on the Braves program and later serve on the school board. “There was no out-of-bounds. The feet of the spectators was the out-of-bounds.”

At first, however, it appeared the dream of a new gym would be just that. A dream. When coach and school administrator Jack Whittaker, for whom the La Conner High football field is named, put pencil to paper there wasn’t enough money in school coffers to finance a gym.

So, with few – if any – options available, Whittaker and the school board appealed directly to the community to roll up its collective sleeves and help build the gym on a volunteer basis.

La Conner area residents were quick to answer the call, working alongside paid contractors and construction workers.

The backbone of the project, according to Chuck Hedlund, Brian’s dad, was provided by local farmers, most notably George Peth. Others pitched in, as well, as time allowed. Even high school students did their part that summer.

The result was what at the time was the biggest gym in Skagit County, seating 1,500 people and featuring a cozy balcony – which became a favorite section for grade school students – behind the south basket.

The playing floor measured 81 feet from baseline to baseline, an odd dimension easily explained, says Chuck Hedlund.

“They made it one foot longer than Mount Vernon’s gym,” he says.

The floor would loom large in other ways, it turned out.

Made of concrete covered with an emulsion and then an asphalt tile playing surface, the floor was slick not only in design but also in practice. Perspiration from large crowds attending the District Tournament in La Conner condensed on the floor, causing players to slip and slide all over the place.

The problem was eventually remedied with what was to give La Conner a tremendous home court advantage in the years to come. Sections of plywood were installed over the original floor, akin to the format employed at fabled Boston Garden, that greatly improved footing.

But it also created “live spots, where fastening rivets were driven, and corresponding “dead spots.” Both impaired dribbling for visiting teams. La Conner players used those spots to their advantage, however, mentally mapping the location of each.

“If you knew where the dead spots were,” notes Tom Zimmerman, a standout on La Conner’s State tourney teams in the late ‘60s, “you could force the other team’s point guard there and steal the ball.”

Even so, the La Conner gym was held in such high regard upon its completion that Mount Vernon High and others would book it for workouts.

“Mount Vernon had really good teams back then,” Thulen says, “and they would come over here and practice. I’d stay after school and watch those guys.”

Perhaps the best example of the La Conner home court edge came in 1954 when a powerhouse Skykomish team, destined to win the State crown, lost its only game of the season here.

The balcony would emerge as a factor, too. Kids would razz and distract opposing players when they shot at that end.

The atmosphere in the building was often electric, filled to the brim with fans on weekend nights in the ‘50s and ‘60s when there was little else happening in town in terms of entertainment. Holiday tournaments regularly drew teams from much larger schools, helping pack the gym. In 1971, the Seattle private school Lakeside – whose student body included future billionaire Bill Gates – paid its first visit.

Still, winning at home was expected. So much so that opponents took great pride in coming out on top, even in meaningless exhibitions.

“I remember one year we were hosting a league jamboree where each team played eight minutes and then rotated out,” says David Bretvick, a 1977 La Conner grad, who was a freshman when a new maple floor was installed at the gym.

“We were just using the jamboree as kind of a tune-up for the season,” Bretvick remembers, “but the coach of one of the other teams was pretty intense that night. He got into it with coach (Dave) Edwards and at one point shouted at him to sit down.

“Later,” adds Bretvick, “right before we were going to play them in a league game at home, Coach Edwards got us together and reminded us what had happened. He told us he didn’t appreciate being told to sit down in his building and that if we lost to those guys he wouldn’t be a lot of fun to be around on Monday.

“Needless to say,” Bretvick says, “we won the game.”

Radio stations often covered La Conner games live at the old gym, routinely setting up in a corner near the balcony, doing so almost weekly during the late ‘60s when Braves star Doug Wilbur was drawing attention of collegiate scouts and coaches.

On one occasion, steps leading to the balcony were completely blocked as fans hovered near to hear a halftime interview of Wilbur’s grandfather, then-Swinomish Tribal Community chairman Tandy Wilbur, Sr.

There were times basketball took a back seat to other ventures at the gym. Like a much anticipated appearance by popular Seattle TV personality JP Patches. Then, each spring, La Conner artist Laurie Wells and members of the Civic Garden Club magically transformed the building into an amazing floral garden. Six months later it would receive an autumn makeover and play host to a community-wide carnival.

After construction in the early 1980s of Landy James Gymnasium to the north, the old gym was less in demand. It was used primarily for sub-varsity contests, though also utilized for major wrestling matches and sometimes served visiting acts like the Harlem Clowns basketball team.

It was for a time adjoined by the La Conner High baseball field. The east gym wall made for an inviting leftfield home run porch, much like Fenway Park’s Green Monster. Tyler Zimmerman, Tom’s younger son, was among those Braves hitters who cleared the gym with towering homers.

Yet long before that, the building itself was a big hit.

It was proclaimed as such by revered Seattle sportswriter Phil Taylor, who covered the gym’s construction, his laudatory account carefully saved and filed away by La Conner’s Herb and Sally Cram.

“La Conner,” Taylor wrote in 1948, “is a pleasant little village of 650 inhabitants (give or take a couple) some 65 miles north of Seattle that produces farmers, fishermen, mill workers, and basketball fans. Mostly it produces basketball fans.

“And,” Taylor insisted, “they’re proud of that nearly completed gymnasium – ultimate seating capacity 1,500 – which is the new home of the La Conner Braves, focal point of the town’s sports world.”