Town residents seek cheap place to play, Philips not it

Kenney Redd has been at Philips Gym, working on his basketball game about three times a week since his high school season ended.

"Competition helps you out," Redd said as he stood in the middle of an otherwise empty basketball court at Philips. "Once you start playing with the bigger guys, you get better."

Redd plays frequently in games that involve other high school students, college students and older town residents. Though it's located at the edge of both the campus and the town, Philips Gym is a place where Oberlin the city and Oberlin the College meet.

And when there's not a game going on at the gym, Redd, 15, takes advantage of the open glass backboards, smooth floor and his family's gym membership to work on fundamentals. "I can work on my shot when there's not a lot of people here," he said.

Redd, a sophomore at Oberlin High School, is one of many Oberlin public school students who use Philips regularly. Most of the high school students who use the gym use it for basketball.

The prices they pay are not cheap. Anyone under 18 without a gym membership must pay $5 per visit to get into the gym. Adults without memberships pay $8.

Athletic Director Don Hunsinger says members get a lot for their money for use of a health club.

But some at the College and in the town believe the College should not be running a health club, that it has a responsibility to the community that it's not fulfilling because admission costs make Philips inaccessible to many.

The price of admission to the gym increased last year. The gym sells more than 700 memberships a year to families, groups and individuals, Director of Recreational Sports Jeff White said. Annual family memberships cost $365 per year. Annual individual memberships cost $285. Business groups can get discounts.

"We offer a lot more than any other health club, probably, in Northern Ohio," White said.

Memberships to the gym have been for sale since the late 1970s and those who hold them now visit the gym around 120,000 times a year, out of a total of approximately 360,000 visits annually.

College students, College employees and their immediate families gain free admittance to the gym. Serving students is the top priority for Philips, Hunsinger said.

"The students deserve a building that's open as long as the library's open," Hunsinger said.

The gym brings in approximately $110,000 a year from memberships. Those revenues support White's salary, the salary of the equipment room manager and the wages paid to approximately 130 students who work at Philips.

Hunsinger said the funds are stretched too thin. "In my opinion, the only salary we should pay out of this should be Jeff's," he said. "The money should go to refurbishing the gym."

Not everyone agrees with the administration's reasoning for the gym membership pricing. "They don't raise prices to make money," senior Ryan Maltese, an Abusua co-chair said. "They raise prices to keep certain kids out."

Even though the College has the most complete athletic facilities in the area, Hunsinger doesn't think it has a responsibility to open its doors to the entire community. "We should not be the sole baby-sitting operation," he said.

Connie Ponder is the town's recreation director and has the job of finding recreation for Oberlin's youth. She would like the town to have facilities for its own use but said that probably won't happen for a long time.

The City of Oberlin's only indoor basketball courts are in its public schools and at the College. Danny Jones, a jobs specialist at Oberlin High School, said the public school gyms are usually in use for school events and that it would make sense to give high school students more access to Philips.

"[Philips] is going to be here. It should accommodate not only students but the town too, since it's the only facility," Jones said. And to be able to accommodate the town, Jones said, the admissions price should be lower.

"A lot of kids can't afford to go up there," he said. "In an effort to accommodate their own needs, they sneak in."

Sophomore Charna Kieber, a Philips employee, said it's common for students to sneak past her and other attendants. Wednesday, she said, two students were caught attempting to sneak in. Many are not caught.

"There's a good chance high schoolers will come in when there's a big crowd," Kieber said. They also sneak in through the back doors of Philips, but often other gym-users catch them. "Older members are very good at catching kids," she said.

Unauthorized gym users are a problem for Philips management. "It's pretty tough to justify a student's paying $28,000 to come here and they can't even play basketball because someone has a guest pass or is illegally in here taking their space," Hunsinger said.

Sigrid Boe is an organizer in a community effort to build a swimming pool in town since the city can no longer rent the College's Crane Pool. She said that while gym prices are high, "I don't think college students should subsidize all the recreation in town."

Of all the gym's areas, the one that tends to become overcrowded with younger people is the basketball court. "I don't think I've ever thrown anyone out of the weight room yet," White said.

Ponder said she thinks the College administration establishes gym-use policies on behalf of the students, but she isn't sure the students agree.

"I think people have taken the liberty of speaking for the students," Ponder said. "These rules and regulations are put in place and they are made on an administrative level. And it's hard to know whether they truly reflect the student view of things."

A universal view of things is that Philips has the biggest indoor basketball court in Oberlin. That there's no other place like Philips to play basketball is a reason many kids, including 16-year-old Travis Watcher, play at Philips.

Watcher is an Oberlin High School sophomore who can use the gym for free because his mother is a College employee. He said that the $5 a day cost is prohibitive to many of his friends. He thinks a $2 entrance fee would be appropriate. "With $1, we'd have a mad crowd," he said.

As things are, most weekday afternoons, the courts are relatively barren. They usually fill up in the evening and on weekend afternoons. Then, players like Watcher and Redd test their skills against bigger, older players like Oberlin College junior Kiese Laymon.

Laymon said gym crowding is rarely a problem and that it's never a problem when both of the Philips basketball courts are open and all the hoops are down.

He likes the chance to interact with high school students in the gym. "It's the coolest thing the College has going," he said. Laymon said that by playing basketball together, high school and college students get to know each other. "They ask us about college and stuff."

Ponder - a former College athletic department employee - said that if the College made the gym more accessible, more gaps between the campus of 2,700 and the town of 8,000 that surrounds it could be closed.

"In a town this small, it just seems things are separate - unnecessarily separate," she said.

Top: They're no Yeomen High school student Kenney Redd (left) and other Oberlin residents on one of Phillips gym courts. (photo by Richard Hong)
Bottom: Hooping it up: Local high school students enjoy the basketball facilities at Philips Gym. The quality of the Philips facilities is said to be unparalleled in the town of Oberlin. (photo by Richard Hong)

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