Sept. 24, 2008
DOME PHOTO GALLERY
posted by Will Roleson, Associate Commissioner, Communications and Multimedia
At 10:30 this (Wednesday, Sept. 24) morning, an historic (and in some corners, sad) event occurred in the grand history of sports in the city of Indianapolis.Amid a ceremony with local dignitaries, that's when the button was pushed
It's the first outward sign that the football stadium/basketball arena/concert hall/monster truck venue will soon be just a memory on the Indy landscape, replaced last month by the mammoth
By this coming spring, the western corner of Capitol Avenue and South Street will be nothing more than an empty lot. In its place by 2010 will be an enlarged convention center that will rank among the 20 largest in the country. Plenty memories will remain, however, including 24 seasons of
Beyond the great games in the Dome that have been well-publicized - the Colts' come-from-behind
So, take a stroll down memory lane with me as we bid farewell to the RCA (nee Hoosier) Dome...
I saw my first event at the Dome on January 25, 1992. Of all things, it was a
Four years later, in the fall of '96, I returned to the dome with my wife and my brother to watch our hometown high school (the undefeated
Alas, the unbeaten season was over virtually from the kick-off as FC starting quarterback Wes Gillman suffered a broken leg on the Wildcats' first series of the game, and Wayne went on to
I wouldn't return to the Dome again until after I took the job at the Horizon League in the summer of 2004. In my first year at the League office, I was co-local media coordinator for not one, but two NCAA national championship events in a span of 2 ½ weeks in March and April of 2005.
The NCAA men's first and second rounds saw the NCAA Basketball Committee load the Dome's eight-team bracket with Midwest powers Kentucky, Cincinnati and Big Ten champion Illinois, all of whom brought gigantic crowds that filled every seat with even a glimpse of the court (and some others probably with none!).
The Fighting Illini went on to finish as national runner-up, falling to North Carolina and former Indiana prep standout Sean May in the championship game two weeks later in St. Louis.
Indianapolis hosted its first Women's Final Four just two weeks later, marking the first time the event had been held in a dome. Perennial title contenders Tennessee and LSU were there, as was upstart Michigan State, but it was Baylor, the small Baptist school from Waco, Texas, that took home its first national championship in women's hoops.
One short year later, the Men's Final Four returned to the Circle City for the first time in six years. Entering the national semifinals, the story of the tournament was George Mason University, the Cinderella squad from the Colonial Athletic Association that become the first `mid-major' to reach the Final Four since the tourney was expanded to 64 (now 65) teams in the mid-80s. But the Patriots' history-making season ended in the semifinals at the hands of the Joakim Noah and the
Since then, I've been in the Dome for a couple of monster truck shows and two Colts preseason games, but most notably last fall for a football scrimmage between the Hawkeyes and Hoosiers of the
More memories are bound to be made at Lucas Oil Stadium. I'll be there in a week-and-a-half for the annual
In March, the
So, I'll just pack my RCA Dome memories away and prepare to make new ones to share a couple decades down the road.
So long!