COBDEN (WSIL) -- The Cobden Basketball gym has been around a long time but it is officially condemned due to structural damage. Sunday afternoon, we got to go inside Cobden's gymnasium to take a closer look.
"The way the walls are bowing in a particular direction really brings home that the building is built in 1955 and the cost was a $135, 000," Cobden Superintendent Edwin Shoemate said. "We are not able to get a building at that cost now so we are literally working with Terri Bryant, Senator Bryant and Senator (Dale) Fowler. Came by yesterday and toured the building with me and try and help me get that emergency funding from the state that we so desperately need."
Shoemate gave us a tour of the gym and pointed out some of the damage.
"They scaffold from one end of the gym to and they'd have to repair one board at a time because they are all connected together and the cost of that outweighs the cost of a new gym," Shoemate said.
When you arrive on the Cobden school grounds. The doors to the gym are blocked off. Structural damage throughout.
"Here we have a ten inch deflection to the top of the wall and that was detected in the scan that they did. This buttress over her goes to the girls locker room and has a large crack inside the girls locker room."
So much history has been played inside the Cobden gym. Trophies were moved to a spare classroom.
And for current student athletes game and practices have to be played elsewhere.
"64 Appleknockers played here so it's hard to come to the conclusion that this gym will not, has hosted it's last ball game."
"we've been in some talks with other schools in the area and they are all super helpful so we are really going to try and make it a special season for our guys," Cobden Boys Basketball Coach Wendell Wheeler said. "We talked to them about Covid and we handled that and we were pretty tough that way."
