By NORM MAVES JR./Beaverton High School, Class of 1966
If there was ever going to be an occasion when Beaverton High School’s venerated old gymnasium just couldn’t take it anymore, it would have been last Friday night.
By the time the Beaver boys and ancient rival Jesuit faced off – at 7:21 p.m., if it matters – the old edifice at the Stott Street entrance to the old stucco school building had endured a day full of physical education classes, a junior varsity game and a varsity girls game.
When Jesuit is in town, that means the bleachers are at full tremble and the noise can hit painful decibels. The signature low ceiling and acoustic tile holds and amplifies every sound.
If that wasn’t enough, Friday was also the biggest day of the year at the school. Jam the Dam is the day the school sets aside for an all-out effort to raise money for the Make-A-Wish foundation. That means a raucous assembly, posters everywhere, sales booths and a special tee shirt on every torso. Everybody who wore one Friday night displayed the school’s Beaver head in a cowboy hat; everybody was a “Wish Wrangler.”
And not lost on anybody in the house at gametime was that fact that this was it. This was the last time one of Oregon’s most famous – and certainly durable – gyms would entertain an athletic activity. This is the last year for the whole school. Next year the whole school operation moves across Second Street to the new building that has been going up for three years now. The teams will move into a snazzy amphitheater – think Mountainside – and keep on playing.
And the tractors move in and the deconstructing of Oregon’s oldest ongoing high school will begin.
Beaverton students – including the author – have been getting an education in a building that first opened in 1916. It has nurtured young people through two world wars, an historic depression, a “police action” in Korea, a tragedy in Vietnam and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Ups and downs, ins and outs, Beaverton High School in its stucco splendor has always been a landmark.
If the walls of the old gymnasium could talk, it could tell stories of the players who have pounded up and down its floor. Mickey Sinnerud dishing off to Steve Pauly in the late 1950s, when the Baby Boomers arrived and Beaverton emerged as an athletic power … big Steve Erickson, the school’s first true big center … Anthony Taylor’s thunderous dunks in 1984 … Nick Robertson, Taylor Barton and the 1998 state boys champions … Betsy Boardman, then Gigi Stoll, then the Naro sisters and the 2022 state champions. Even Wilt Chamberlain dropped by once, in the 1959 season when he played for the Harlem Globetrotters.
There was a school controversy in the early 1960s about a belly button on the painted Beaver on the south wall. Should it or should it not have one? This was before the Vietnam war swallowed a generation of young people and changed the methods of protest.
The gym has endured the legendary Midcourt Mob student sections of the 1980s, which at times drew administrative censorship for their … um … enthusiasm. In those days, the gym was also known as the House of Loud. Use your imagination.
And then there was Andrew Vancil, who played on the Beaverton floor as a little kid, then as a Jesuit Crusader and finally, in the fall of 2004 as a transfer Beaverton Beaver himself.
And for the last 12 years, as the head coach of the boys program. He has had this last Friday night on his mind since the fall. Sometimes with dread, sometimes with awe, but always with pride.
“I’ve had a lot of fun nights in this gym,” he confessed Friday, “both as a player and a coach. I’m just trying to soak up the last week and the last day in the gym
“There are a lot of emotions tonight, with Make-A-Wish being part of it, too.”
The girls team, which played Jesuit before the boys game Friday, has been just as occupied with the occasion.
“I’m a senior,” said Beaverton wing Alexia Braden, “so it really means a lot to not only end the chapter at this school and this gym, but to end it in the best way – with a win. We’ve definitely been talking about it this week.”
Njenga Mungai, a senior guard on the boys team, knows what Braden means.
“I mean, I grew up in this gym,” he said, “My brother Ben graduated here in 2020, so I’ve been here for many, many games.
“It’s always been a dream come true to play here. It’s pretty special to be a senior, in the last class to graduate from this gym. I’ve always loved this gym more than any gym in the state.”
By the time Mungai took the court, the old gym had already withstood a ferocious girls game. Braden and the Beaverton girls fell behind 39-29 late in the third quarter to a Jesuit team fighting for a tie for the Metro League championship.
Then sophomore point guard Mila Watson drained two nerveless three-pointers, her teammates applied a suffocating press and the while group played as it has not played all year in a 27-6 run for a 56-45 victory.
The game was a merely comma, though, in a night that was a festival as much as it was a basketball game. While the boys teams warmed up, the drop-down screen in the middle of the court flashed team pictures of years and years of Beaverton teams. A Beaverton teacher walked along the student section, tossing Chick-Fil-A sandwiches into the mob. The Beaverton band, decorated for the occasion like everybody else, wailed away in the southeast corner of the bleachers.
At halftime of the boys game, the school’s dance team, the Rhythm B’s, marched in – along with alumnae of the dance group invited to return for one last encore. This included Jani Penn Richards, class of 1964, who is 79 (“and three-fourths!”), and who danced as well as anybody in the building.
And when the Beaverton rally formed a corridor for the player introductions, the first introduction was Kylie, the Make-A-Wish guest of honor. Beaver guard Spencer York – yes, the football quarterback – led her by the hand through the line, to the roar of the whole house. Not everybody was able to hold it in during the special moment.
So the passion of the night was still full throttle when the boys lined up for the tipoff.
But it couldn’t save the Beaverton boys. They rallied to take a 44-43 lead in the second half, but couldn’t withstand a barrage of three-point shooting from Jesuit guards Ryan Barone, Joe Stimpson and Major Williams and went down 68-58.
Mungai, in his final home game at Beaverton, rang up 31 points.
And so a 110-year era came to an end – at 8:56 p.m. on Feb. 27, 2026. The band’s funeral dirge was one last rendition of “Hats Off To Beavers.”
And the old gym withstood it all without a flinch. Not bad for 110.
Technically, basketball is not done at Beaverton. The Beaver girls will play a state playoff game against Lincoln at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The boys will play their first round game at Grant. The PE classes and assemblies will go on for the rest of the year.
But there was an unmistakable air of finality around the gym after the last buzzer of this last game went off. Parents and relatives waited for their children to finish with their tasks. Groups of students began disassembling displays in the hall outside the north doors. Selfie phones snapped up the memories. Vancil sought out his old mentor, Gene Potter of Jesuit, for a photo together.
The place began to echo a little as people drifted away. By 9:30, the place was mostly empty.
All that was left then were the ghosts of things that that happened there. The memories of Mickey, Steve, Anthony, Betsy, Gigi, Taylor -- even old Wilt – went back to the place where memories go until they’re needed again.
Five generations after the first two-handed set shot of a ball with laces went into a crude steel hoop, you get the feeling that even when this space is a parking lot – as is the plan -- those memories will always be available.
And always needed.
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