A FALSE ECONOMY? When I was in high school, several of the Milwaukee teams never had a home basketball game. North Division played home games at Rufus King, South Division at Pulaski, Juneau at West Division, Washington at Custer. The city subsequently spent some money on new high schools (South Division dated to the 1890s, North wasn't much newer) and on some sports facilities, including an athletic complex for Washington. But with a tile floor?

It was one of the best high school basketball games we'll see all year, but it was also a little embarrassing.

When Milwaukee Hamilton took the floor against host Milwaukee Washington in a key City Conference showdown on Friday, the big game was played on a tile floor.

That's right: Washington's main gymnasium still has a linoleum tile floor. Large squares, brown and speckled, well-maintained, but still . . .

A tile floor? Come on, now.

Bill Molbeck, commissioner of athletics for Milwaukee Public Schools, says Washington is the only MPS high school with a tile gym floor. Todd Clark, communications director at the WIAA, checked around Monday and said he couldn't identify another Wisconsin school that holds varsity basketball games in a tile-floored gym.

And we're talking about one of the most storied basketball programs in all of Wisconsin. The Washington boys have qualified for the WIAA state tournament 10 times since 1976, winning four championships and sending Latrell Sprewell to the NBA. The girls have made 10 state appearances since 1979, winning five titles.

Dozens of scholarships were earned on that tile floor. Futures were forged. Basketball means something special to Washington and its students, past and present, and it says something sad to all of them that conditions haven't improved.

Washington won the game. Had they played the game at Hamilton, it would be on a hardwood floor. The alumni association raised some money to refinish it recently. The Hamilton floor went into service in 1967. The athletic complex at Washington is late 1970s or early 1980s ... they didn't start playing home games in the original gym?


As far as I know, the Washington improvements didn't include a planetarium.