There was no dramatic explosion, no spectacular wrecking ball. The old gym at the Scotts Valley Middle School came down in slow, scraping, gnawing chunks, grabbed and pulled apart by three different-sized excavators with steel jaws.
The basketball goals and scoreboard were among the last pieces to fall, buried under rubble and sheet metal.
Ron Whittle, who had coached the girls basketball team in that gym, stood and looked at the concrete risers, nearly invisible under stone and steel, and shook his head.
The Scotts Valley Fire Department Battalion Chief was there on June 30 in an official capacity, to check on fencing and fire exits, but the visit brought a flood of memories.
“I played basketball here 40 years ago,” he said.
Whittle would later go on to coach junior varsity and varsity girls at the Scotts Valley High School. But this dark, echo-filled, dreary place would always hold a special place in his heart.
“When we played there, heating pipes ran under these concrete steps, which kept us warm when we weren’t playing,” he recalled. Later that heating plan, no doubt state-of the-art in the 1960s, would give way to a noisy ceiling-mounted space heater.
The short wall that surrounded the gym floor like the boards in a hockey rink were built later. “When we fell off the court, it was dangerous,” he said. “We would fall into those concrete steps.”
At mid-week, when the tiles were removed, the old painted foul lanes could been in the concrete. The tile-on-concrete floor was tough on young knees and the lace-up canvas “sneakers,” perhaps explaining the frequent use of knee-pads in the early days of the gym.
Social media posts reflected on other memories.
Adam Muth wrote: “I can’t tell you how many Cub Scout meetings were held here when I was a lad.”
“Those concrete bleachers were hard on your buns!” Torch Doherty recalled.
Rob Carlisle wrote, “Wow, do I remember playing in this gym for SLV during junior high back in the late ‘70s.”
“This is a long time coming, since it really wasn’t that great of a gym even back then.”
The new gym, part of the Scotts Valley School district’s nearly $40 million reconstruction project, is to be completed by next summer.
It is one of six buildings that will be entirely new: in addition to the gym, foundations are being laid this summer for a new administration building, new library and three new classroom buildings.
Three classroom buildings and a multi-purpose building will be renewed or renovated to current school construction standards.
Temporary modular classrooms will house students during construction and be removed when the project is complete.
The entire project, now on a fast track, has an August 2018 completion target.
The project will proceed in two broad phases.
The first phase, with a completion goal of the end of this year, will see the erection of three pre-fab class room buildings at the southeast corner of the campus, located at Bean Creek Road and Scotts Valley Drive.
In the courtyard of these three new buildings – now an open area where portable classrooms has once stood, the new library will be built. This also is a pre-fabricated structure.
After completion of the first phase, the district plans to spend the winter “break” moving into the new classrooms, and clearing out three current classroom buildings so they can be gutted and completely renovated.
