Macon Auditorium, "where basketball was the thing"

"It’s nostalgic to see it there when you go through Macon,’’ said Billy Powell, who played on Perry High’s 1953 championship team and later witnessed 10 state tournaments at the Auditorium as an adult. “When you go in there today, you know it’s not a basketball arena anymore. There’s a sadness about it. That old building meant a lot to a lot of people.’’

Today, the state tournament moves into the semifinals with games at the Gwinnett Arena and the Macon Centreplex. Championship games will be played Friday and Saturday.

Through most the 1950s and ‘60s, the state’s biggest schools (Classes AAA and AA) played their state tournaments at Georgia Tech.

In Macon, the Auditorium was home to the A, B and C tournaments, essentially the championships of small-town Georgia. Each tournament, consisting of 8 to 16 teams, was played over four days, all in one place.

To Dicky Erwin, a student manager on Cochran High’s 1965 Class A championship boys team, coming to the Auditorium was among the thrills of his young life, even if Macon was only 40 miles from home.

"Low-country folks just didn’t go to the big city in those days,’’ said Erwin, now a school teacher. “The Auditorium looked like a whole city block to us. There was a big old concrete porch all the way around it [with columns] that looked to us like a sidewalk. There was a [copper] dome on top. It was real high.’’

The defining feature inside was the balcony of seats that encircled the arena. Jimmy Wright’s brother met it head-on when Wright made a famous shot for Westminster to beat Commerce 61-60 in 1967 Class A boys final.

"My mother and younger brother were sitting high up in the stands,’’ said Wright, president of the Jefferson Scholars Foundation in Charlottesville, Va. “Time was running out and I was about 30 feet out. I threw it up there and it went in. My brother jumped up and banged his head.’’

Jonnie Gentry Coleman played at the Auditorium three times in the 1950s on girls teams from Roopville in west Georgia. It was the first time she’d seen a glass backboard. Roopville’s teams stayed at a hotel but never went out to eat.

"We didn’t have the money, dear,’’ Coleman said. “You’re talking about in the ‘50s and we were county girls. My father would send eggs and bacon [from his farm] and the parents who came along would cook breakfast for us at the hotel."

Many fans came without allegiance to any school. It was the chance to see the state’s best in one venue, four days of non-stop hoops.

Powell, who wrote “Pride of the Panthers,’’ a history of the Perry basketball dynasty from that era, remembers watching eight games at one sitting, even when Perry wasn’t playing. He would load up at the the Nu-Way Weiner stand across the street before coming inside.

“Basketball was king in those days to many of these little towns,’’ Powell said. “There was tremendous pride in their teams. When you went to Macon, the whole reputation of the town almost depended on it.’’

On March 16, 1968, Taylor County’s girls beat Harris County 41-24 for the Class B championship, the first of five straight titles but the last of the 20 years of state tournament games in the Auditorium.

Downtown parking had become a headache and Macon had built a new arena, the Coliseum, off I-75, the same building that hosts this week’s semifinals and finals for Classes AAA, AA and A.

The Coliseum was bigger, seating more than 7,000, but not better, according to Norman Carter, the coach of those five state champion Taylor County teams.

"We loved the City Auditorium because it was always packed [with a capacity of 3,500], just such a great crowd,’’ Carter said. “In the Coliseum, you could have 4 or 5,000 and be half full. The Auditorium was so much more conducive to excitement.’’

But the end of an era had been coming in other ways, too.

Small-town schools such as Edison, Dexter and Doerun that had won titles in the Auditorium were being gobbled up by consolidation.

Schools got bigger and so did their arenas.

When the Auditorium first staged its Class B and C tournaments in 1949, most of the participating schools didn’t have football teams. Basketball towns dotted the state, each with its eyes on the City Auditorium.

Today, players in the state finals will enter big arenas with with their iPods and cell phones, a different world.

“All we had in those days was a basketball and a bicycle,’’ Powell said. “Basketball was the thing.’’