Indiana fans vote on the state's best high school basketball gym

The South Bend Tribune put Indiana’s biggest-gym debate in readers’ hands July 22, asking which high school basketball gym in the state is the best. The poll followed a July 9 history feature and shifted the conversation from nostalgia to a live contest over atmosphere, sightlines, student sections and the kind of home-court pressure that still defines Indiana basketball.

That July 9 piece, part of the Tribune’s America 250 project, traced why the state has so many monumental gyms in the first place. It noted that during the 1950s and 60s, most of the largest high school gyms in the country were built in Indiana, a reflection of how deeply basketball shaped school identity, town pride and Friday-night crowds across the state.

The current vote lands in a landscape crowded with heavyweights. A published ranking of the largest high school basketball gyms in the United States puts Lloyd E. Scott Gymnasium in Seymour, John A. Baratto Athletic Center in East Chicago and New Castle Fieldhouse near the top, with Tiernan Center in Richmond, Bill Green Athletic Arena in Marion and North Side Gymnasium in Elkhart also in the mix. Another Indiana-focused list says the state owns 10 of the 12 largest high school gyms in the country, a concentration that explains why this argument never really goes away.

New Castle Fieldhouse remains the benchmark in many conversations. One source lists its seating capacity at approximately 8,424 and says the gym reclaimed its title as the world’s largest high school gymnasium after renovations. That kind of number matters in Indiana, where a building’s scale often becomes part of its identity, not just a line on a facilities sheet.

The Indiana Destination Development Corporation has leaned into that idea with a blog post titled These Basketball Cathedrals Are the 10 Best High School Gyms in Indiana. The language fits the way fans talk about these places, as more than venues and more than old gymnasiums. Seymour, East Chicago, New Castle, Richmond, Marion and Elkhart all carry their own followings, and each fan base has a different memory of what a packed crowd, a loud band night or a tense postseason game felt like inside those walls.

The Tribune’s poll turns that long-running argument into a direct choice: size alone is not the point. In Indiana, the best gym has to earn its reputation with noise, history and the feeling that every game inside it still matters.