My first time inside Williams Arena had nothing to do with the sports the building is usually associated with. In 7th grade, I attended University High School, a private school on the University of Minnesota (UM) campus. U-High was grades 7–12; by the time I reached eighth grade, U-High merged with the public Marshall High School and became Marshall-University High School (M-U High), a public school.
U-High was in SE Minneapolis, several miles from my home in South Minneapolis. My mother wished to avoid sending my brothers and me to the public schools in our district. My elementary school (Field Elementary) had integrated a couple of years before my arrival, and only recently did I discover the protests and resistance to integration. I would have attended Bryant Junior High and Central High School, which were approximately 80% Black due to various restrictions (redlining, steering, and FHA and VA lending practices) that segregated housing in Minneapolis. My older brother, Kevin, was two years ahead of me and had gone to U-High. I followed in his footsteps.
One of my required classes was physical education (gym). In 7th grade, I was tall and skinny, weighing 109 lbs for wrestling. Several weeks into the semester, we had a swimming bloc. Because U-High was associated with the UM, we had limited access to their facilities, including a swimming class at Williams Arena, which had an Olympic-sized pool deep in its bowels. Something that could never happen today for fear of grooming or molestation is that boys were required to swim nude.
I’ve read that the concerns were for the cleanliness of the water, and the rules were made when purification systems and filters weren’t what they are today. It seemed that swimsuits were deemed a likely source of contamination, as if 7th-grade boys, even naked, were clean. There were also issues of costs, as school boards and cities didn’t want to foot the bill for swimsuits. Many of the facilities only permitted males, and there was a desire to replicate the “old swimming holes” where nudity was common. In some cases, girls were required to swim nude. I don’t know what the girls did at U-High or if they even got to swim at Williams Arena.
The eleven and twelve-year-old boys in my class were in varying stages of pre-pubescence. Hair under the armpits and pubic regions ranged from thick to non-existent. The boys glanced sideways at each other, checking each other out without staring. Most of the boys never stripped beyond their underwear when changing for gym class, so this was their first opportunity for comparison. After a few days, nude swimming became normal and almost forgettable, as far as I know, for the boys. Who knows what the gym teacher was doing? I don’t have any strong memories of swimming, except for the time I almost drowned.
What would an Olympic-sized pool be without diving boards and platforms? We were banned from all but one diving board, where there was a line to climb the ladder and spring off the board into the water. The other boys were having so much fun, and I wouldn’t let a little thing like not knowing how to swim stop me. I had a plan in which every time I reached the bottom, I would push off towards the side until I reached the edge.
There is an often-repeated theory that you only come up from the water three times before drowning. I pushed off the bottom at least six times, gasping for air each time I broke the surface. I was getting close to the edge when another student, Stan Humphries, reached out and grabbed my arm, and pulled me the last couple of feet to the side. Swim class eventually ended, and M-U High didn’t have access to Williams Arena the following year.
It was a few years later when I returned to Williams Arena. I was a high school basketball player, and sometimes, our home games coincided with Minnesota Gopher games a dozen blocks away. Our games always ended sooner, and sometimes, we’d head to Williams to sneak in and watch the end of the men’s games. The Gophers had some good squads those years and were often ranked in the Top Ten in the country. We made it a point to get to the UM/Ohio State game, which could mean the Big Ten Championship. The game had been hyped as the biggest in UM history. In those days, only the conference champion advanced to the NCAA Tournament. We got there just in time for the fight.
50 years ago, the Gophers game ended in a legendary brawl
Fifty years ago, Ohio State was ranked the sixth-best college basketball team in the country, and the Gophers were 10…
It’s important to note that most UM players were Black, and most of Ohio State’s were white. Descriptions of the fight center on the villainy and bad acts of Minnesota players, with no condemnation of Ohio State players like 7-ft center Luke Witte elbowing a Minnesota player as the players entered the tunnels at half-time. Witte allegedly spat on a Minnesota player helping him up after a hard foul. Witte took a severe beating, requiring multiple stitches. Two Gopher players were suspended for the remainder of the season. The Gophers went on to win the Big Ten Championship but were soon eliminated without two of their top players.
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I only got to play a pick-up basketball game at Williams Arena, though it was the annual site of the High School State Tournament. In my senior year, I was All-City, and we won our first game against a much higher-ranked team (Vocational). Then, we met Mound H.S. for the district championship. I scored 34 points against Vocational while the Mound coaches watched. When we met them, I was double—and sometimes triple-teamed. I ended up with 16 points (7 of 8 from the field) and 26 rebounds in a loss.
Mound went on to reach the State Tournament, which was played at Williams Arena. My friends and I snuck in, as was our custom. There were no empty seats, as the arena was filled to capacity. I was wearing a letter jacket with my name on the back and the letters M-U on the front, identifying my school. We walked near the Mound cheering section who called out my name and cheered me for having played a good game against them.
That was my last time in Williams Arena. I went to college outside Minnesota at Fisk University in Nashville, TN. While visiting home a month after Fisk started classes, I bumped into the University of Minnesota freshman coach, who I knew by sight but didn’t realize he knew of me. He offered me a scholarship to Minnesota, which once was a dream of mine, but I was now committed to Fisk, plus the ratio of women to men at Fisk was like 8:1. I probably have only been to Williams Arena a couple of dozen times, but it created quite a few memories. I rode past Williams Arena this year while in Minneapolis for a high school reunion. I looked for Stan Humphries to thank him for saving my life, but he wasn’t in attendance. Maybe next time.