welsh-ryan arena

When McGaw Memorial Hall was built on Northwestern University's campus in 1952, a few steps from the north end zone of Dyche Stadium, it was one of the most admired basketball facilities in the Big 10 Conference. I recall my father taking me to a basketball game not long after McGaw was opened. It was named in memory of the Rev. Francis McGaw, a Presbyterian minister who son Foster McGaw donated the necessary funds. But it soon became obsolete. In 1983, it was renamed for the principal donor, Patrick Ryan, president of the Board of Trustees, and his wife's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Welsh Sr. It is an 8,117-seat multi-purpose arena that is home to Northwestern basketball, volleyball and wrestling teams. It hosted the NCAA's Final Four in 1956. It also has hosted an Illinois high school supersectional basketball game since 1956. As high school sports editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, I covered one of the most exciting games in the history of the state tournament, Maine South's last-second 65-64 victory over New Trier West in 1979. The fieldhouse also hosts the annual Midland wrestling tournament, one of the largest collegiate events of its kind. Until 2014, Welsh-Ryan was the only basketball arena in the Big 10 that did not seat at least 10,000. But it lost its status as the conference's smallest arena when Rutgers was admitted. Rutgers' facility has a listed capacity of 8,000. Welsh-Ryan is old and antiquated and no amount of new paint and lounge seats and new lighting changes the fact that a Big 10 school deserves better. Since Northwestern has never qualified for the NCAA tournament, however, it isn't likely that a new and larger facility will be considered until there is more of a demand for seating, as there was when Northwestern's football program had a string of successes in the 1990s and prompted university officials to renovate Dyche Stadium, also with considerable financial aid from Patrick Ryan. For the time being, however, since standing-room-only crowds are only realized when rivals such as Illinois or Indiana or Wisconsin fill the seats, Welsh-Ryan is a comfortable facility that provides excellent sight lines for everyone.