In the spring of 1995, less than a month into Marist College athletic director Tim Murray’s 30-year-plus tenure, the Marist softball team wanted to use the basketball gym in McCann Arena for an indoor practice without cages or nets.
While an indoor practice with softballs flying across a basketball gym already sounded like a bad idea, the new athletic director was not at Marist. He was at home with his wife Barbara, unaware of the wild accident about to take place in Marist’s premier basketball facility.
Murray drove up from Westchester County and arrived at the scene of the accident. The facilities keeper relayed to him that a sprinkler head burst when a softball hit the ceiling of the basketball gym, completely soaking the wooden floor. He had arrived within two hours of the accident, yet the damage was already irreversible.
The gym’s wooden floor began to cup from the 500 gallons of sprinkler water that doused it. Murray could only watch as the 7-year-old basketball court, which had been donated by standout men’s basketball alum and Indiana Pacers center Rik Smits in 1988, was ruined by the freak accident.
That summer, the arena floor had to be torn out and the athletic department started from scratch. Luckily, the College’s insurance policy covered the costs of the second maple floor installed in the arena, relieving the new athletic director of what could’ve been a nightmare situation in the first month on the job.
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Aside from freak accidents, the McCann Center (called the McCann Arena before 2011) has undergone many structural changes since being built in 1977. Most surprisingly, the gym floor used to not feature any wood whatsoever.
Before Marist underwent its transformation to a Division I program under former Marist College president Dennis Murray, wood was not the industry standard for college basketball gyms. A synthetic urethane floor that had a rubberized feel instead became the first floor in the McCann Arena.
Tim Murray explained that while the initial perceptions of the synthetic floor seemed to have more advantages than disadvantages–better durability, good resistance to water (this was nearly two decades before the wood floor sprinkler accident), and good shock absorption to prevent injury–the industry standard floor quickly shifted.
“It was a little slippery; they found that its abrasiveness was more difficult to maintain than a wood floor,” said Tim Murray. “It was hard on knees and backs–much more than what they had originally thought–and it wasn’t what everyone thought it would be.”
“I had never seen anything like it,” said Dennis Murray. “They not only had this rubberized floor over the entire gymnasium, but the basketball court was striped and then there were lanes literally around it. They put the bleachers back for track races.”
Smits graduated from the school in 1988; after finalizing his contract with the Pacers, the recent no.2 overall pick in the NBA draft wanted to give back to the college that put the “Dunking Dutchman” on the map
While still an assistant on the men’s basketball team when Smits donated the funding for the original wood floor, Tim Murray and former Athletic Director Brain Colleary worked closely on the new project together. Murray had aspirations of getting into athletic administration, and the two worked together to secure a new maple floor.
At the time, the floor itself was experimental; the two had hired a company called Mathusek to design the floor using a prototype stainless steel border around the edges of the wood paneling. Murray believes Manhattan College used a similar style shortly after the construction of the Marist gymnasium along with other gyms in the New York metropolitan area.
While the floor has undergone different surface changes, the walls of the arena in McCann are wood paneling. President Murray believes there’s a possibility that the wood walls are the result of the switch to a urethane floor in the original construction.
“It looks like the wood paneling for an athletic floor on the walls,” said Dennis Murray. “They had decided to go that direction, but had already ordered from wood so they put it up on the walls and everyone thought it was great. It’s kind of a cool look for the gymnasium.”
With the unique walls still layering the compact 3,000-seat gym, the McCann floor most recently underwent renovation in 2011, when the college re-branded the facility as the McCann Center. Tim Murray explained the current floor is coming up on its first maintenance needed since installation 12 years ago.
“Each year, we do maintenance on the floor and they buff up the top coat,” said Tim Murray. “At some point in the future, we have to go down to bare wood again, strip off all of the top coat, repaint all the lines and then basically start over.”
While annually polishing the top layer, wood floors require sanding every 10-15 years of use, good enough for a maximum time usage of around 50 years.
Contingency plans have been put in place since the sprinkler accident in 1995. While Murray called the accident “a little embarrassing,” sprinklers in the gym have cages around the exterior. Knock on wood, a single softball won’t cause any more problems to the longstanding McCann Center.
Edited by Danny Destler and Luke Sassa
Graphic by Cara Lacey; Photos via Marist Archives
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