âThe Rugâ at This Gym Isnât a Coachâs Toupee--Itâs the Floor : Oak Park Basketball Savvy Called on Carpet by Coaches Who Complain of Burns, Bad Bounces on Soft Surface
Watching an athletic event in the gym at Oak Park High in Agoura is a unique experience. Crowds seem meek, sneakers donât squeak. Players get rug burns.
The gym floor is carpeted.
âYou feel like youâre playing Nerf basketball in there,â said Mike Smith, a junior varsity basketball player at nearby Calabasas High.
The rug has lain there since the gym opened in the spring of 1981, and almost four years later the rug is still being called on the carpet. Oak Park is believed to be the only high school in the state with a carpeted gym floor.
Former Oak Park basketball Coach Paul Robinson, asked his opinion of the carpet, told a reporter the other day: âI donât use that kind of language anymore.â
âWhen I resigned,â added Robinson, who now coaches on wood at Mount Carmel High in San Diego, âone of the last things I wrote on my letter of resignation was that Oak Park would never have a contender with that kind of floor. . . .
âYou canât teach any defensive skills because you canât slide on it--you have to pick your feet up really high--and you canât teach your kids to take a charging foul because theyâll get injured too severely with rug burns.â
Even the district manager for the company that installed the carpet, Collins & Aikman, said it was âreally not designed for highly competitive activity.â
It was designed to save money, which attracted Dan Thompson, superintendent of the Oak Park Unified School District and the man who ultimately decided to carpet the floor.
The gym at Oak Park is a multipurpose facility, and the rug was put down on the floor for the same reason people carpet their living rooms: It requires less maintenance than wood.
âThe (original) cost was comparable to a hardwood floor,â Thompson said, âbut we donât have to worry about students taking their shoes off if we have a dance, we donât have to worry about assemblies, we donât have to worry about dusting the floor two or three times a day, we donât have to worry about stripping it and painting it every year or two. . . .
âThe operating cost of a hardwood floor is very high--the custodial cost. If youâre using the gym all day, you need to dust it three or four times a day. You need to strip it every year. Itâs expensive.â
The carpet is vacuumed once or twice a week, Thompson said, and is steam-cleaned once a year.
âI think from an administrative point of view and from a financial point of view, itâs good,â he said.
But coaches and athletes hate it.
Oak Park junior varsity boysâ basketball Coach Jim Cox suggested that the administration ârip it upâ and called it a âhorrible surfaceâ for basketball.
âA true basketball coach wouldnât really like this facility,â said varsity basketball Coach Todd Corman. âIt isnât what basketball was meant to be played on. It wasnât meant to be played on your living room carpet. It was meant to be played on hardwood.â
Although it no longer does so, Oak Park used to supply elbow pads and kneepads for its opponents.
Mark Groff, varsity boysâ basketball coach at St. Bonaventure High in Ventura, said several of his players had âopen sores on their arms that were oozing for several daysâ after they fell on the carpet at Oak Park last season. He said they did not use the elbow pads provided by Oak Park because they were not used to them.
Rug burns are also a problem for girlsâ volleyball teams. The sport requires a lot of diving.
âItâs very hard to dive because you stick to the floor,â said Oak Park junior Carla van Gorp, a varsity volleyball and basketball player.
Van Gorp said she was tripped during a basketball game and suffered a rug burn on her thigh that became infected and had to be treated by a doctor.
âWhen you try to slide on it,â she said of the floor, âyour bare skin sticks and the rug pulls back.â
The rug also absorbs much of the gymâs noise.
âYou donât hear the bounce of the ball,â Corman said. âItâs very dull. Itâs a thud. You donât hear the squeaky sneakers. You canât tell when someone is changing directions. . . .
âThereâs not much echo and not much sound from the crowd because the carpet deadens the noise. Itâs not very loud. Itâs not much of a home-court advantage, except for the floor.â
Groff said the floor definitely gives Oak Park an advantage over teams that are playing on it for the first time.
âThereâs just something psychological about seeing the carpet,â he said.
âSome of the kids, the first time they see it, it kind of blows their mind. They say, âWhat is it? Whatâs it going to do?â Theyâve never seen it. Theyâve never been exposed to it. Theyâve never even seen it on TV because the colleges and the pros donât use that kind of floor.â
Visiting teams have to make special preparations to play at Oak Park, Groff said. Older shoes are preferable, he said, because they donât grip as tightly to the carpet. âSometimes if the kids donât pick up their feet,â Groff said, âtheyâll topple right over. Even the best, most coordinated kids will fall right over because when you stop, you stop. . . . We recommend that they wear shoes that are worn in and a little slick on the bottom.â
Visiting players also tend to outrun the ball when theyâre dribbling, Groff said, because the carpet is slower than wood. And, on bounce passes, the ball tends to skip and stay low instead of coming up.
âWeâre really cautious about throwing long bounce passes because they tend to stay down extra low,â Groff said. âWhen weâre doing our passing drills the day or two before we play there, weâll make short bounce passes or no bounce passes at all.â
Collins & Aikman, which has a regional office in Calabasas, has produced carpets for high schools, churches, recreation centers, rehabilitation centers and junior high schools across the country.
The Bear Bryant Fieldhouse at the University of Alabama is carpeted, and so is the field house at Loyola University in New Orleans. Both are intramural facilities.
âThe product was made specifically for a multipurpose-type recreation center, not for highly competitive activity,â said Herman Lemberg, district manager for Collins & Aikman. âItâs great for intramurals. Junior high and down itâs great . . . but not for the professionals or colleges or high schools.â
Oak Park opted for the carpet, however, because of its âease of maintenance,â said former Athletic Director Ron Welch, who recommended the rug to the district.
Welch, who coached high school basketball for 27 years, said that when he was at Poway High in San Diego he had to sweep the floor as many as eight times a day.
âI think itâs a great product,â Welch said of the carpet. âItâs five years old, and to me itâs in just as good a shape as the day we put it in. And, believe me, thatâs with no maintenance. If you took a hardwood floor and didnât maintain it, you wouldnât even be able to play on it after five years. . . .
âI realize that the carpet has drawbacks and that most people donât like it. But for the purposes of Oak Park, which doesnât have the personnel to maintain a wood floor, I think it was the proper choice.â
Instead of putting down a concrete base, which is typical in these kinds of installations, Oak Park put down a more expensive--and more flexible--wood base. It then had the carpet laid over that.
According to a company brochure, the Pro-Gym surface is composed of four layers, âfused together under high heat to prevent the possibility of delamination and unraveling.â The top layer is a dense, low-surface pile of nylon.
Lemberg said the carpet, which is designed to produce a true bounce and is more durable than an office carpet, will not have to be replaced at Oak Park for at least 10 more years. The carpetâs tight-looped construction prevents spills from being absorbed and allows the rug to be cleaned easily with a sponge or a rag. Burns, rips and tears can be patched.
Still, it has its drawbacks.
âItâs different,â said Oak Park Athletic Director Mark Jacobs. âIt just doesnât feel like a basketball court.â
Jacobs said he wouldnât recommend a carpeted floor.
âI like the wood floor,â he said. âI like the sound of it. I like the shininess of it--the whole concept of wood. But then, on the other hand, financially itâs a lifesaver. . . .
âWe donât get that many complaints, but itâs nobodyâs favorite gym. Iâll guarantee you that.â
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