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By JOE PETRUCCI
jpetrucci@leader.net
Saturday, March 08, 2003 Page: 3B
HERSHEY – “They’ve got TVs in the locker room.”
Meyers senior and three-time state qualifier Joe Rovelli was referring to
the facilities at the $60 million Giant Center, just a few thousand feet away
from Hersheypark Arena, the home of the PIAA Wrestling Championships for the
previous 24 years.
So much for nostalgia.
Most everyone asked prefers the Giant Center, the state-of-the-art home of
the state tournament that opened last October, to the antiquated but
memory-filled Hersheypark Arena.
The old arena had a reputation for cramped seating, dirty and bare-bones
restrooms and locker rooms, and was generally overcrowded. Giant Center has
ample leg and elbow room in the stands, more than enough locker and meeting
room space and has that new-arena smell.
“The pipes always had water dripping down, it was like something out of a
Rocky movie,” Coughlin coach Dana Balum said of Hersheypark Arena.
Said Rovelli: `I think it’s a lot nicer. I like the bleachers. At the old
arena, the seats were all close together and you had no room.”
Bob Lombardi, the PIAA’s assistant executive director and tournament
director, also likes the extra breathing room. He said it allows his staff,
along with trainers and sports medicine staff and the media, to do their jobs
better.
“(The new arena) is not only better for running the tournament but also
for the care of the athlete,” Lombardi said. “It’s a whole new ballgame.”
That cliche is appropriate because instead of the four mats that were
standard at Hersheypark Arena, there is enough room for six mats at Giant
Center. That speeds up the tournament and shortens the day for everyone
involved – especially considering the addition of the 215-pound weight class
this season.
Not everyone likes the six-mat format. Dave Williams, a Wilkes-Barre
resident who has attended the tournament every year since 1963, said the
hockey boards, which the end of each mat touches, pose a danger.
“The place is beautiful, but the old setup was better,” Williams said.
Balum had a problem with the mats for a different reason. Competitors not
wrestling and coaches are permitted to wait in an area on one end of the mats.
The scorers’ tables that separate the mats block the view of the coaches,
waiting wrestlers and most on press row.
“The main ingredients, the wrestlers and coaches, can’t see anything,”
Balum said. He recommended putting the scorers’ tables in the first row of the
stands, similar to the setup at First Union Arena in Wilkes-Barre Township,
where the NCAA Division III Championships were held last year.
The $1.2 million, four-sided scoreboard hanging from the top of Giant
Center is fan-friendly. Matches under way are listed on the board so fans can
tell who is where, and results are also posted.
That’s a far cry from the old arena, which has little to hang on to in
Hershey.
“Its history, that’s about it,” Rovelli said.