Construction Nightmare, Varsity Gymnasium

By: Hubert Crowell

For more than 40 years, the 8,000 seat venue at Appalachian State University in Boone North Carolina has stood up to heavy snows and tough winters. When it opened in 1968, the facility was North Carolina's largest indoor athletic facility west of Charlotte and Winston-Salem.

Crowds have visited Varsity Gym to witness various circuses, they've also seen The Harlem Globetrotters and Herrmann's Royal Lipizzan Stallions of Austria. The list of entertainers and concerts to step on the stage in Varsity Gym is a diverse group, covering several musical genres. Bruce Springstein, Chicago, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Steppenwolf, The Allman Brothers Band, The Fifth Dimension, Andrew Gold, Dionne Warwick, Bread, Phish, The Atlanta Rhythm Section, Pablo Cruise, Kenny Rogers, The Carpenters, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose, Ronnie Milsap, Edgar Winter, Gary Puckett, The Lettermen, The Chairmen of the Board, The Four Tops, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, The Temptations, The Beach Boys, Jimmy Buffett and Ray Charles all made appearances in Varsity. Several public speakers, ranging from educational too political to comedic have addressed large crowds in Varsity Gym. John Houseman, Jane Fonda, US consumer advocate Ralph Nader, entertainer Bill Murray, Harry Reasoner of 60 Minutes, US Army General Thomas Kelly, as well as Grammy Award-winning poet, writer, composer and actress Maya Angelou all stood behind the Varsity Gym podium.

But in 1967 when I was working for Noble Concrete installing the Post Tensioning cables in the thin deep beams that support the roof, I was having nightmares over the safety of the building. This was one of the main factors that helped me decide to find another line of work and get out of the construction business. And it was one of the last jobs that I was involved with.

The beams were so thin that we could hardly find room to place the steel much less the cables which were encased in a flexible metal tube. The beams were almost 8 feet deep and the cables ran from the tops of the columns to the bottom of the beam at the middle. Any miss alinement would result in the beam twisting when the stress was applied. After a nervous few days we had the cables stressed to the correct tension and locked into place.

The problem we now faced was filling the long metal tubes with grout. There was a hole in each end of the cable plates where we connected the grout line and proceeded to pump the grout under high pressure until it sprayed out the other end. However it never came out, the span was too long or there were crimped places in the tube that prevented the grout from filling the cable housings. We were told to pump all the grout that was possible from one end, plug the hole and then go to the other end and do the same thing.

The grout bonds to the cables, but I had no way of knowing how much of the cables were covered in grout and how much were just laying in water! I could picture the cables rusting and breaking at some point under a heavy snow. But I was not an engineer and I was assured that it was safe. I never liked the grouted cables, the cables that were greased and wrapped in heavy paper always worked as planned. For years after completion of the job I half expected to hear of a collapse. I am thankful to God that it has stood up this long. The good thing is that the longer concrete sets, the stronger it becomes and I assume that the cables if in water would need air in order to rust.

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hubertcrowell@comcast.net