The newly renovated Memorial Gym on the UTEP campus, home to the university’s volleyball team, debuted to a sold-out crowd Sunday, Aug. 30.
Memorial Gym underwent extensive renovations in the offseason as part of the Club Memorial project. The upgrades include new lower-level chairback seating, LED lighting, an upgraded sound system, Taraflex competition flooring, enhanced MinerVision production equipment and several additional fan experience improvements.
The volleyball team is looking for a third consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament.
Memorial Gym opens for 1961 basketball season with new coach
The Texas Western Miners, now UTEP Miners, gave El Paso fans their first look at the new Memorial Gym at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 8, 1961, when they opened their 1961-62 season in the 4,300-seat gym.
The gym was completed
just a few days before the home opener. The Miners returned from their three-game opening road trip, having only a few practice sessions on the new playing surface.
There wasn’t just a new venue for basketball; there was a new coach. Don Haskins started his first of 38 seasons at UTEP that year.
He took over the men's basketball program for the 1961–62 season. Haskins retired in 1999 with 719 career wins, an NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship, and an induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach in September 1997.
Haskins died at the age of 78 on Sept. 7, 2008, at his home in El Paso.
The Miners opened against the Phillips “66” Oilers, an amateur basketball team sponsored by the Phillips Petroleum Company based in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Here is what the coach had to say about the new Memorial Gym and his new team in a Dec. 3, 1961, El Paso Times article:
TWC Cagers Inaugurate Memorial Gym
A new era in Texas Western College basketball begins next Saturday night when the Miners play their first game in their new, sparkling 4,300-seat gymnasium on the campus.
The opponent for the first night opener in Memorial Gymnasium will be the fabled Phillips “66” Oilers, one of the nation’s greatest basketball teams and one that has contributed many players to represent the U.S. in Olympic competition.
For the past several years, all home games were played in the Coliseum, and the big building served the college well. TWC coaches and fans believe, however, that enthusiasm for the game (and attendance) will increase when the game returns to one campus.
There’s another advantage, little noted by the average fan, which could play an important part in helping TWC to improve its basketball.
As coach Don Haskins put it, “You don’t know how much it means to a team to play on the court where it practices. When a team practices in one gymnasium and plays in another it is almost, though not quite as bad, as playing away from home.
“The players become, almost unconsciously accustomed to the angles and to the layout of the court and to the background they’re shooting against. It is worth several points per game and it is an advantage other teams have had against Texas Western which this school hasn’t enjoyed.”
New-and promising-team
Texas Western will make its debut with a new and promising team under a new coach who has drilled fundamental basketball rigidly into an 11-man varsity squad.
That practice of emphasizing fundamentals has proved itself for the young TWC coach. He has produced championship teams at every coaching post he has held, starting with small West Texas high schools, where he consistently defeated Class AAAA schools, and working his way rapidly up the ladder to college coaching.
Haskins is a graduate of Oklahoma A&M, trained by one of the nation’s most noted coaches, Henry Iba. Like Iba, he believes in tough defensive play and a disciplined, patterned offense.
“You try never to beat yourself with mistakes, taking bad shots that give you poor opportunity for scoring. And you try to make sure that the other fellow pays for his mistakes,” Haskins said.
The TWC coach is working under a handicap during his first season. All of the players are new to him, and many of them were strangers to each other when the squad assembled this year. All are new to his coaching style, just as they would be strangers to any change in style.
But Haskins feels that the players have talent and promise. “If we can hang tough for a while, maybe we’ll come around. But we don’t have much height, and we’re only an 11-man squad,” he added.
Fans will see the 1961-62 team in action Saturday night. The opposition will be the nation’s strongest, probably, for the Oilers can beat almost any college team in the land. But maybe they’ll see something fine in the new TWC basketball team, too.
Phillips won that game 97-75.
The basketball team moved to the new Special Events Center in 1977. The Special Events Center was renamed the Don Haskins Center, Sept. 25, 1997, in conjunction with his induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Trish Long may be reached at tlong@elpasotimes.com.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: From Don Haskins to UTEP volleyball, Memorial Gym endures
