Blue White Illustrated

From 1909 until 1960, most of Penn State's athletic facilities were located on the northwest part of campus. Outdoor sports used the Beaver Field area near the corner of Park Avenue and Atherton Street; indoor sports first used the school's multi- purpose Armory just west of Old Main, then moved to Rec Hall in 1929. For several decades, the ath- letic department's a d m i n i s t r a t i v e staff and most coaches had their offices in Rec Hall, and that didn't change until the Bryce Jordan Center opened in 1996. At the end of the 1959 season, the Beaver Field football grandstands and press box were dismantled, moved across campus to their present site and renamed Beaver Stadium. A new practice field was carved out of a grassy area along University Drive just south of the stadium, and the team moved into the East Area Locker Room building that had been constructed in 1956 as part of the plan to move into Beaver Stadium. Be- fore the football team arrived, the build- ing was used by the lacrosse team and patrons of the shabby nearby ice rink known as the Ice Pavilion, which had opened in 1955. The name was deceiving. The Ice Pavilion, located where the Lasch Building and the Morgan Aca- demic Center are today, was actually the inside of an unheated Quonset hut opened at both ends. At one point in the early 1960s, the football team practiced inside the Quon- set hut, but just how many times is un- known. Memories fade as we grow older, and two players from that era admit they can't remember much about the Quonset hut. Harold "Junior" Powell was a stand- out defensive back and flanker on the 1961-63 teams that played in two Gator Bowl games, and he once held the school record for career receptions. "I can re- member practicing there only once when the weather was really bad, but there may have been other times," Powell said. "It was a hard floor and not a good place to practice." Longtime assistant coach Dick Ander- son was one of Powell's teammates those same years and led the team in receiving in 1963. "I can't remember practicing in- side for football, but I remember distinc- tively that I was in that ice rink for baseball," Anderson recalled. "[The base- ball team] utilized that facility in the win- tertime in February and March prior to going outside." Holuba remembers his teams of the late 1960s practicing inside the Indoor Tennis Center, near where Holuba Hall is today, adjacent to the west side of the East Area Locker Room and parking lot. "It was then a metal building with three or four tennis courts," Holuba said, "and we would go in there with socks or sneak- ers. With 100 guys in that room, Joe had to limit what we could do. We didn't wear any pads, but we could at least do a walk- through of our plays." A new facility More than a decade passed before the Penn State administration finally decided in 1976 that a permanent indoor practice facility was needed for football and other sports, as well as a new indoor ice rink. Documents provided to this writer by Penn State's library archivist, Paul Dyzak, specified that "no tuition or tax dollars" could be used for project. Basic funding was instead to come from the gifts of "loyal alumni and friends" as well as "outside borrowing, athletic income and ice rink revenue." Although fundraising began quickly, another three years went by before the board of trustees signed off on the ven- ture in May 1979. By that time, a support building had been added for the offices of IF YOU BUILD IT... Penn State has been con- ducting indoor practices at Holuba Hall since the end of the team's 1986 national champi- onship season. The building is named in honor of Penn State graduate Stanley Holuba (oppo- site page, left), whose son Bob (opposite page, right) played for the Lions in the early years of the Paterno era. Photo by Greg Grieco/ Inset photo courtesy of Holuba family

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