Hawks Nest bleachers to go on sale
The numbered portions of the old Hawks Nest bleachers are being sold for $50 while the lettered row pieces, pictured here, are going for $10 apiece. The floor boards will be sold at $5 for a complete length as fans can purchase a nostalgic piece of Hiland history.
During his six years serving as Hiland athletic director, Art Yoder has labored to pull out the old bleachers in the high school’s old gymnasium, so lovingly dubbed the Hawks Nest. For six years he has watched as the archaic bleachers have become worse for wear.
After spring break this year, he can check that task off of his list of to-do items. The East Holmes School District is currently in the process of replacing the old seating with a new updated bleachers set, and in doing so, the idea arose to create a fundraiser with the old bleachers that many Hawks’ fans might love to be a part of.
“These original bleachers have seen a lot of wear and tear over the years, and the ongoing maintenance issues we were having with them where it was fixing one thing and then another was becoming such a burden,” Yoder said. “It was time to bring them into this century.”
The East Holmes School District located a set of bleachers at Miami Trace High School in Western Ohio, and the fairly new, plastic seating area will soon replace the old bleachers.
But rather than simply unload the former bleachers into a dump or burn them, Yoder had the idea of selling off pieces of the old Hawks Nest bleachers to anyone wanting to purchase a little piece of history.
The seating in the Hawks Nest was always at maximum capacity for sold-out crowds throughout the years, which forced administration to at times add live-feed video to the neighboring auditorium where overflow crowds could watch the game.
Season tickets were tough to come by, and on the rare occasion they were turned in, they were quickly snatched up immediately.
“Back in our early days at Hiland High School, there was a great sense of nostalgia, and everyone went to the games on Friday and Saturday night because that was the thing to do,” Yoder said. “Because of that culture, there is a great deal of nostalgia and memories tied into this gym.”
Thus those season ticket seats were a parking spot for some of the more memorable moments in Hiland basketball history over the years.
From Linus Miller and Andy Ahjijevych in the early 1960s, to the reign of John Hochstetler, Craig Hershberger, Keith Troyer, Junior Raber and the Hawks’ first state championship team in 1992, to the great state teams from the 1990s, the Hawks Nest has been special.
For instance, even the 1982 team that played .500 basketball knocked off Strasburg and Indian Valley South, a pair of top-10 teams in the state, in a one-week span. Or how about Jason Mishler’s running last-second jumper in the lane that beat Garaway in 1998, a shot that shook the rafters of the old gym? Or the time All-Ohioan Dave Hostetler’s spinning lay-up hung precariously on the back iron for a good five or six seconds before falling in as the crowd went wild.
Then there is Bruce Byler’s well-known scoreboard cheer, Perry Reese roaming the sideline, watching Launie Shaw become the first Lady Hawks All-Ohioan and Ora Shetler guiding Hiland to its first girls state tournament. The list of memories is long and strong, and the bleachers have been there from day one.
Yoder wants to give people a chance to retain a piece of that lore in this current fundraiser.
“There is an awful lot of memories in that gym,” Yoder said. “We are going to try to utilize all of the pieces as a fundraiser for the Hiland athletic department. We are in the process of removing 60-year-old nuts and bolts that are rusted on, and they are extremely heavy and hard to remove, but we are excited to be able to offer a piece of history to anyone that wants to purchase some of the seating.”
Yoder said the pieces of seating panel wood, numbered one through 10 from each of the sections, are 12- to 14-feet long. Along with the numbered seat planks, there are the heel board lengths with the section letters on them. There also will be floor boards for sale for someone with a keen eye for being inventive and decorative.
“How awesome would that be for Hawks’ fans to have a piece of history?” Yoder said. “We didn’t want to waste any of the old bleachers. We hope that each piece of the historic, old stands will find a home somewhere. We know a lot of people are really nostalgic when it comes to our basketball programs. I would absolutely love it if every one of these boards found a home somewhere because they are a neat part of the history of a pretty special basketball program.”
District maintenance crews are slated to come in over spring break at the end of March to remove the old frame, which will look very skeletal without the wood, and install the new stands. The new bleachers will include more up-to-code walk-ways and hand rails. Yoder said it was interesting to see how things fell into place with the new bleachers.
For anyone interested in purchasing a piece of Hawks’ history, they can call Yoder at the high school at 330-893-2626 or email him at art.yoder@eastholmes.org. He said they can make arrangements, and people can purchase as much as they want.
The boards will be sold in full length with a length of numbered seat tops with numbers 1-10 selling for $50, lengths of aisle letter boards selling for $10 and $5 for any other floor board.