An era of three decades of outstanding basketball performance came to a fitting conclusion Friday night at Myrl Massie Gymnasium which opened during the 1984-1985 basketball season.
The facility has been home to Farmington's boys and girls teams ever since with the final competition played against U.S. 62 rival Prairie Grove on Friday. Farmington alumni, past players and coaches were invited back for the event by the school and packed the stands watching the Cardinals maintain home-court advantage with a sweep of the Tigers. The girls won 53-42 and the boys prevailed, 66-53.
The arena has been the scene of numerous accomplishments by Farmington teams. In three decades Farmington has won 15 conference championships, qualified for state 16 times, with 11 teams advancing to the state semifinals and four teams reaching the state finals while based out of Myrl Massie Gymnasium.
Brad Blew, now Farmington athletic director, coached the 2003-2004 girls state 3A champions during the era and served as master of ceremonies during a special "Lights Out" ceremony after the final buzzer sounded.
The arena was expanded during the 1992-1993 school year with a concession booth and public restrooms added on. Blew noted that the sun used to shine into the arena through windows on the south wall saying, "We've made some improvements since then."
The ceremony began set to a soundtrack of Kool and the Gang's Celebration as Blew recapped a history of Farmington basketball at the facility.
"This is a night of a lot of celebration. It's about closure for the facility, it's about two great towns, two great teams and a great rivalry, and it's about alumni coming back home," Blew said.
Blew said he recently learned a story from Bob Spears, who was part of Farmington School Board while Myrl Massie Gynamsium, which is named after a former Farmington Superintendent of Schools, was being built. At one point in the process construction came to a halt caused by what Blew termed a rift between the architect and the builder.
"We told the architect to take a hike and here we've got the building -- 30 years later."
Blew has been at the school 29 years remembered the invention of a basketball booster club at Farmington in 2002, which he described as being "Nothing but a blessing ever since" before going on to thank people who have served as part of the Cardinal basketball booster club.
Blew also acknowledged various coaches, who have had contributed to Farmington basketball at Myrl Massie Gynmasium mentioning: Bernie Harris, Ronnie Davis, Rodney Self, Randy Osnes, Brad Smith, Matt Mahan, Si Hornbeck, Michael Hemsley and current head boys coach Beau Thompson.
Besides himself Blew saluted Tom Waddell, Daisy Duerr, Jessica McCollough, Denver Holt and current head girls coach Brad Johnson, then invited all Farmington alumni in attendance and current band members to come out onto the floor along with band directors, spirit squads as well as current and former players.
Official scorers Jay Harper, Clint Scrivner and Spencer Adams were listed along with public address announcer Steve Morgan, whom Blew hailed as "having been the voice of the Cardinal longer than I've been here."
When asked to name his sweetest memory from the history of the arena, Davis said, "I'm not sure there's just one."
"Years ago [Farmington] basketball was down, it was kind of known as a football town. We've kind of turned that around," Davis said. "We're pretty competitive now most of the time."
Thompson pointed to winning a tournament title in the facility as a cherished prize memory.
"We won a Regional tournament in here, that sticks out the most. We had five of the six top teams in the state in our Regional. In the finals we beat Huntsville," Thompson said.
"We'll never be able to duplicate the atmosphere that's in this building," Thompson said going on to recount how he prepared this year's squad for their last home game in the gym.
"I told the boys before the game that we were going to honor those who came before us not by how many shots we made but that we were going to honor them by how hard we played," Thompson said. "I thought we played hard all night."
The scoreboards at both ends of the gym were activated one last time with a 10 second countdown to zero hour leading to a rousing cheer. When the lights came back on, the Farmington pep band struck up the school fight song and for a few minutes after the Farmington faithful lingered on the hardwood recalling glory days of Cardinal basketball.
"This has been a phenomenal facility but tonight it's time to turn the page and start new memories," Blew said. "We've built a state of the art facility and I can't wait to get in there."
Farmington's old gym hosted a reception for alumni throughout the evening and was built in 1945 while a brand new Cardinal Arena on State Highway 170 will open in January as the site for basketball competition.
Sports on 12/17/2014