Hansen: Arizona's Bear Down Gym was once among nation's top venues (1927)

[TomSea]

Hansen: Arizona's Bear Down Gym was once among nation's top venues

Jan. 21, 1927: Bear Down Gymnasium opens

Mostly, Pop McKale wrote letters to communicate. That’s how he “met” and interviewed Fred Enke in 1924.

In many of the letters McKale mailed to the University of Louisville’s football and basketball coach, McKale would tell Enke of a vision to build a new basketball gymnasium at Arizona.

“This gymnasium will cost in the neighborhood of $130,000,” McKale told Enke. “We would like you to be our first coach in the new building.”

Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne had told McKale about the young coach at Louisville. Incredibly, Arizona had an athletic program superior to that of Louisville in the 1920s.

Enke, who grew up in Minnesota, had traveled only as far west at South Dakota State, where he had been an assistant football coach in 1922. His son, Fred W. Enke, told me that “Pappy” was fully skeptical of the small school in the middle of the desert.

At the time, Arizona’s athletic department had no full-blown athletic plant. The baseball diamond and football field were essentially sandlot structures around which automobiles and horse-drawn wagons could watch ballgames.

Read More and a Picture of the Old Gym at: http://tucson.com/sports/greghansen/hansen-bear-down-gym-was-once-among-nation-s-top/article_0d95f61a-64f1-5070-a839-e5a17e8e10f6.html