Evans “Buddy” King
Columnist
Late February and early March is a time of year that brings back great memories of my youth in Christiansburg. The days got longer, the sun was brighter and at a different angle, and the snow piles usually had disappeared – and it was tournament time at the Coliseum in Blacksburg! No Cassell Coliseum then, just “The Coliseum.”
There was no wonder that the Coliseum didn’t need two names in those days. It far surpassed all the other on-campus arenas in the region. UNC and UVA and WVU were all still playing in small gyms built after World War I that resembled high school gyms with upper decks. They were truly “gymnasiums,” built as much for college phys. ed classes as for intercollegiate sports. In fact, one year my cousin Joe lived in a tiny room underneath the running track in “Mem Gym” at UVA (Memorial Gymnasium) as the boarding part of his football scholarship.
Admittedly, Duke was playing in Cameron in those days, but it had not yet become legendary and was really just a larger version of the arenas at the other ACC schools and its “quaintness” was only a gleam in the eye of Coach K (I can’t spell his last name and don’t care enough to look it up). So, in other words, the Coliseum at VPI was special. It seated 10,000 and was the most impressive indoor arena around. It rose from the ground on the Tech campus like a huge grain elevator in a flat Kansas cornfield.
Further emphasizing the “statement” made by the opening of the Coliseum in 1962 was the fact that the Gobblers were still playing football in Miles Stadium, which was directly across the street (Washington Street) and down a steep embankment from the main entrance to the new basketball arena. Miles seated only 14,000 fans (slightly more than the combined enrollment of Tech and the population of the town of Blacksburg in the early 60’s) and had permanent seating only on one side of the field. Lane would not open until the fall of 1965, and major college football was something they played outside the Commonwealth at the time. Winning the “Big 5” (VPI, VMI, UVA, William and Mary, and Richmond) was as good as it got. Tech’s biggest rival was still VMI.
I have many great memories of the Coliseum in those early days. In recent years, I have heard it referred to as “dingy” and a “dungeon,” or worse, descriptions I find hard to believe even over 60 years after its magnificent opening. I assure you that it was anything but dingy or a dungeon in those long ago days. Sadly, I haven’t been there since my parents passed in the early 2000’s, but I did get to take my late wife to a game in the late 90s – a midwinter Saturday afternoon affair with an Atlantic 10 team as I recall. And I still got the rush of excitement I had as a kid when I walked in.
Now a few memories of those early days of “The Coliseum.”
My dad took me to the first game ever in the arena – Jan. 3, 1962. I was in the third grade and the hometown team beat Alabama 91-67. In southwest Virginia, the event was probably not unlike when the Empire State Building opened in NYC. Tickets were impossible to come by, I suspect, and the seats had not yet been installed, so we sat on bare concrete. The Tech team had several football players on it (Jake Adams and Mike Cahill come to mind), as I suspect did the Crimson Tide’s. This was still an era when basketball in the SEC was mainly a thing to keep football players in shape in the offseason unless you were at Kentucky or Mississippi State or Vanderbilt. Our seats were in one of the far corners near the Washington Street entrance, but I couldn’t have cared less. I was in heaven.
I also remember that first year or so the teams (or at least the visitors) had to dress at the old War Memorial Gym on the drill field and be bussed up to the Coliseum. The players and coaches would come in a side entrance and walk through the crowd to the court because the locker rooms were not completed. I vaguely remember WVU All-American Rod Thorn walking past our seats down the aisle to the floor in full warm-ups. It was as close to royalty as I had come.
I also remember a game a year or two later when Tech played (and beat) a good Purdue team in early December. The athletic administration at the school was so excited with their new toy that they let around 12,000 fans into the game, in a building that was designed for 10,000. I remember that the aisles were full of people and that after the game, the Blacksburg fire chief (or someone) said, “Nevermore.”
Undoubtedly my “best” memories of the Coliseum were from the many high school tournament games – New River District (the one Christiansburg, Blacksburg, and Radford were in), regionals, and state – during the mid-60’s. There were three straight weeks of basketball on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and teams came from all parts of Virginia west of Roanoke. My parents loved the games, and we went to every session. I was usually allowed to take a friend, and my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ralph handled the concessions and I remember feeling like a big shot when they gave us free popcorn and cokes. As Superintendent of Schools in the county, but a proud Christiansburger, my dad took “restrained” (reluctant?) pride in the several district and state championships the Blacksburg High Indians won in those days.
Perhaps the story I have told the most from those times involved the two NCAA Eastern Regional opening rounds that were held in the Coliseum in 1966 and 1967. My dad and I went both years. The 1966 games involved Davidson vs. Rhode Island and St. Joseph’s vs. Providence, and the 1967 games were WVU vs. Princeton and St. John’s vs. Temple.
There were several players in these games who went on to sterling NBA careers, but perhaps the best college player we saw was Sonny Dove of St. John’s, a 6’ 7” All-American whose NBA career was cut short by a horrible bicycle accident. The story I have loved to tell over the years involves Sonny. Sonny DOVE. The name is the story.
The1967 opening round games were played on Saturday afternoon Mar. 11. It was a beautiful, clear day, more spring than winter. West Virginia beat Princeton in the first game and St. John’s immediately took the court, led out of the tunnel by their intimidating All-American Mr. DOVE, dribbling towards the far end of the court and followed by his teammates.
A bunch of St. John’s students who had made the trip down from NYC had smuggled about 20 live doves into the Coliseum underneath blankets. About the time Mr. DOVE reached the mid-court line, the doves were released. They apparently saw bright blue sky through openings in the Coliseum roof and took flight in that direction. Unfortunately, directly beneath the openings in the roof were several whirling fans that had something to do with either heating or cooling the building.
You can guess the rest of the sad story. The ceiling started raining blood and guts and whatever else DOVES have in them, showering Sonny and his teammates and a few other people unlucky enough to be on or around the court. It took quite awhile for most of the crowd to realize what had happened, although I think my dad knew immediately. Not a man prone to use bad words, I remember he looked up and uttered one that summed things up perfectly.
