'Super excited to play': Norwood reopens gym with boys basketball game against Shroder

When Norwood High School athletic director Chuck Richardson picked up the phone on Dec. 26, 2022, facilities manager John Peter asked if he was sitting down.

He had some bad news.

A pipe under the gym had burst due to below-freezing temperatures the night before, destroying the hardwood floor. Richardson immediately started scrambling to figure out how the boys and girls basketball teams would finish the season without a home court.

Fellow athletic directors Greg Dennis (Summit Country Day), Zach Stakely (previously at St. Bernard-Elmwood Place, now at Taylor), Tom Nerl (Mariemont) and Shauniece Steele (Walnut Hills) each extended a hand to give the Indians a place to play.

"Appreciative is an understatement," Richardson said. "It's good to have friends in the profession, and you can make those phone calls and they'll make things work."

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Adjusting to change

All told, Norwood played 31 varsity games at neighboring gyms. The going wasn't always easy, though, as teams juggled practices between the middle school fieldhouse and the Norwood Recreation Center.

Led by now-seniors Kylie Jones and Ali and Ava Winchester, the girls basketball team won 11 of 16 games to end the season, a credit to their resiliency and adaptation to the situation.

"It helped them build character and resilience to have to go night after night on the bus and travel, come back and have to practice the next day and do it all over again. So, yeah, they handled things really well, stayed together and didn't let it tear them apart," girls basketball coach Mike Moyers said.

Taking a lesson from his athletes, Richardson had to adapt as well. The original plan was for the new floor to be done in time for the volleyball season, but insurance and contracting issues delayed the completion until early December.

"It's never how you plan, but you've got to adjust, and I can't be more grateful to our volleyball program for adjusting as well. To tell a program of coaches and kids, 'You've got to play all your games on the road,' that's hard," Richardson said.

While the volleyball team was always on the road, the administration did its best to make them feel like home games. DJ Bandcamp performed at several games. The coaches had hospitality rooms in place of the offices they would typically occupy on game day.

Enhancing the student-athlete experience

The floor replacement came around the same time Norwood began to renovate Shea Stadium, a project that cost $2.7 million. Before the Indians take the field for their 52nd season of football on Harris Avenue, many upgrades will take place. The field turf, stadium lights and scoreboard are all being replaced. The stands and concourse are receiving a facelift. They're adding a second story to the press box, and outfitting the locker rooms and athletic training rooms with new air conditioning units.

In addition to the new floor, a new sound system was recently installed and the walls were repainted. The administration is also in the process of updating team banners inside the gym and record boards in the adjacent hallway. Installing a new gym floor was certainly unexpected, but combined with the upgrades to the football stadium, it's giving present and future athletes at Norwood the best experience possible.

"That's the main thing is making sure that our kids have somewhere that they feel like is home and it pops. It sticks out," Richardson said.

The boys basketball team christened the new gym floor with a 72-53 loss to Shroder, but the experience of being home for the first time in a year was a breath of fresh air.

"They were excited yesterday at practice just to get in here and go, just experience it on the floor because some of these kids haven't played a lot of varsity basketball. So they were super excited to play," boys basketball coach Jason Bose said.