From the San Antonio Express News...Built in the early 1960s, Cole High School Gym is the architectural equivalent of a pair of vintage Chuck Taylor sneakers.
Serviceable, but well past its prime.
The ceiling hangs low, almost scraping the backboards.
The polished hardwood court comes up several feet short of the regulation 94.
The locker room would be cramped for a team of kindergarteners, let alone the likes of former Cougars star Shaquille O'Neal.
Yet even as a plush replacement is erected next door — part of a massive renovation project, Cole's new gym should be ready for next season — Cougars basketball coach Herb More can't help but revel in the old building's charisma.
"In a lot of ways, (the new gym) is a relief," said More, who graduated from Cole in 1981 and has spent all but two years of his professional career there. "It's going to solve a lot of problems. But at the same time, there's an affinity for this gym."
"I have hundreds of memories of this place — celebrating after big wins, fussing at the guys when we didn't play well. There have been a lot of cheers and a lot of tears."
Despite impending retirement, Cole's remains one of the classic high school gyms that dot San Antonio's increasingly modern landscape.
Yet as charming as facilities like Alamo Heights' Mule Dome and the venerable Alamo Convocation Center might be, none were once home to a future most valuable player in the NBA and a Hall of Famer.
The Shaq era
Accounts of O'Neal's arrival at Cole in the spring of 1987 have an almost mythic tone. Even before it happened, buzz was circulating around Fort Sam Houston that an enormous basketball player was about to transfer with his family from Germany.
Such stories are commonplace at military schools. But no amount of gossip could prepare Robert G. Cole High School for the moment when O'Neal, at 6-foot-8 and 230 pounds, finally ducked through the front entrance.
"You're always hearing rumors about some 6-6 kid coming in, and 99 percent of them never come true," said Randolph basketball coach Tim Gendron, a Cole graduate who was then a student teaching at his alma mater.
"But when he walked through the door, you just went, 'Oh ... my ... gosh.' He was an awesome specimen."
And he was only 15.
Already a hot ticket, Cole's home games took on a carnival atmosphere as fans scrambled to see the young giant. Not even extra seating on the stage behind the north backboard could satisfy demand.
"If you didn't get there early, or you didn't know somebody, you weren't getting in," said former Cole standout Ed Hooi, now the basketball coach at Brackenridge.
Those who did weren't disappointed. Blessed with the size and strength of an NBA center, yet nimble enough to lead fast breaks, O'Neal — who grew to 6-11, 250 as a senior — averaged 23.8 points and 22 rebounds in two seasons with the Cougars.
Cole lost only one game in that span, finishing 36-0 in 1989 en route to the Class 3A championship.
That O'Neal has gone on to win four more titles and myriad other honors as a professional comes as no surprise to those who watched him manhandle rims as a teenager.
"We're going to have some great players over the years, but he is on a completely different planet," said Alamo Heights coach Charlie Boggess, who routinely hosted O'Neal for pickup games at the Mule Dome. "So quick, so agile, could handle the ball, huge hands, great size, instincts. I guess that's why he named himself 'Superman.'"
Cole's tradition
O'Neal's ties to Cole remain a source of pride. But proof that he ever was there is scant. A team photo and a handful of trophies from the '89 season sit in a display case in the lobby at Cole's Thomas E. Moseley Gymnasium — its formal name. A large championship banner hangs opposite the bleachers.
But there's little more evidence that Cole was the launching pad for one of the greatest players to ever pick up a basketball.
Which, More said, is by design.
"We like to think our program is more than just Shaquille O'Neal," said More, who assisted head coach Dave Madura while O'Neal was a Cougar.
If it could talk, the old gym likely would agree.
Dating to their first district championship in 1968 — commemorated by a dented, tarnished trophy in the lobby display case — the Cougars have built one of the most tradition-laden programs in San Antonio.
"Basketball season is a special time around here," baseball coach Darrell Kurek said.
And never more than when archrival Randolph ventured into Cole's gym.
Bound through their shared military roots — Cole with the Army, Randolph with the Air Force — the schools share what amounts to a sibling rivalry.
"It was like Boston and the Lakers," Hooi said. "There was a lot of respect, but there was also some animosity there."
The intensity of the competition was only magnified in the gym's congested confines.
On one side, bleachers with the capacity for roughly 400 fans pull out within feet of the court. Cheers reverberate off the opposing wall and the low ceiling, creating a din that makes it almost impossible to think, let alone speak.
"It was a hard place to play in," Madura said. "I loved it when I coached there. I hated it when I didn't."
Gendron said his Ro-Hawks squad has become dependent on a series of hand signals he first implemented for its annual visit to Cole.
"That's the only way you can communicate out on that floor," he said.
The compactness of the court is mirrored by a locker room that could be generously described as cramped. A small meeting room was added recently, but it came with a catch.
"You have to watch what you say in there," More said, "because it carries into the bathrooms next door."
Bolted to the floor, sucking up space like O'Neal used to out on the court, is a massive industrial washer. The appliance was installed so long ago that soccer coach Ron Pritchard uses it to measure his tenure at Cole — he arrived in 1974, the washer a year later. Next to it sits a dryer that once warmed a Cole point guard after he was stuffed in it by mischievous teammates.
The memory is just one of many that come to More's mind as he contemplates the end of the building around which his life has revolved for nearly three decades.
"It's kind of like your first love," he said. "You might get married, but you'll always remember that first person."