DOWN MEMORY LANE he elaborate fanfare and pyrotechnics at modern-day professional and collegiate sporting events have nothing on the well-choreographed atmosphere inside Rose-Hulman’s Shook Fieldhouse that helped motivate the Fightin’ Engineers to monumental basketball success for more than 25 years.
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STORY BY DALE LONG
Where else could you find the ear-piercing sounds of police sirens, submarine crash dive alarms, large brass bells, and a cannon blast that bewildered opposing players? Then, there was the large banner that seemed to mysteriously unfurl from the ceiling, urging the men’s and women’s hoops teams to “Give ’em Hell, Rose!”
ALL ALL S K H SHOOK O O SHOOK SH K UP UP
“It was electrifying,” says legendary men’s basketball coach and athletic director John Mutchner, who brought the antics to campus in hopes of bringing the public’s attention to the small college program. “We needed to breathe some life into the program,” he adds. “The sights and sounds brought crowds to see what was happening in the fieldhouse. Those crowds brought the players. Then, the players brought the wins.”
Mutchner’s 1976-77 team won a school record 24 games and advanced to the quarterfinal round of the 1977 NCAA Division III tournament. That started the first glory era of men’s basketball, with postseason appearances in the 1977-78, 1980-81, and 1981-82 seasons. “Shook Fieldhouse was a great place to play basketball,” remarks the former coach. Gary Dougan (ME, 1973), the most valuable player of the 1971-72 and 1972-73 teams, appreciated the special times in the quaint athletic facility, stating: “Shook was so far ahead of its time. The noise and the banner made every night a magical moment. Talk about starting the game with a home-team advantage. After the cannon blast, our opponent knew whose court they were playing on.” The fieldhouse was a converted unused World War II B-29 hangar, acquired from the War Assets Administration to shelter a basketball court and indoor track, starting in 1948. Wilbur B. Shook, a 1911 architecture alumnus, undertook the mission
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ICONIC FIELDHOUSE LIVED UP TO ITS NAME ON GAME NIGHTS of reassembling the massive structure on the north side of the growing campus. He captained the baseball team and played football before going on to become a leading architect in Indianapolis. The original basketball court featured a dirt-based floor that hugged the building’s west end with a set of stationary concrete bleachers for the small crowds that attended games. The rest of the facility was used for track and indoor football practice, along with locker rooms and offices for athletic coaches. The basketball court was renovated in the mid-1950s to a wooden floor base, and elevated 2½ feet above its dirt foundation. The next major transformation for the fieldhouse came in the early 1970s when a state-of-the-art tartan floor was installed (a first for college gyms). The basketball court was moved to take prominence in the center of the facility, with retractable wooden bleachers and surrounded by an indoor The “Give ‘em Hell, Rose!” banner, track. A recreation center, supported by a centerpiece of pregame festivities Shook’s 1911 classmate Everett E. Black, in Shook Fieldhouse, is still part of was later added, along with handball Rose-Hulman as a fixture of Hulbert Arena courts, a weight room, trainers’ room, in the Sports and Recreation Center.