Foster Forward: From Carroll Field to Foster Pavilion
12/15/2023 8:52:00 AM | Foster Forward
By Jerry Hill, BaylorBears.com
WACO, Texas -- Baylor basketball has certainly come a long way since playing its home games on an outdoor court at Carroll Field, which also happened to be the on-campus home for Baylor football.
Located between the Carroll Science Building and Waco Creek, Lee Carroll Field was also the home venue for Baylor's baseball and track and field teams in the early 1900s, with Baylor defeating TCU, 6-3, in the football team's first Homecoming game on Nov. 25, 1909.
In the early 1920s, the Bears transitioned to an open-air wooden structure for a short time before moving to their first full-time basketball facility in 1938, the on-campus Rena Marrs McLean Gymnasium.
The home for Baylor basketball from 1938 to 1953, the 3,500-seat arena was named after the mother of Texas oilman Marrs McLean, who donated the lead gift toward the building's construction.
Originally proposed in 1914 by the Baylor student body as The Bath House to "serve as training quarters for our athletic teams," Marrs McLean Gym still stands 85 years later with academic rooms for health and human performance classes and the full-length basketball court, along with coaches' offices, a team locker room and a separate training area for the eight-time national championship Acrobatics & Tumbling team.
At one point, Marrs McLean also housed all of the athletics department offices until they moved with football to Baylor Stadium in 1950.
During a 15-year run, the arena had several packed sellouts and hosted a Baylor men's basketball team that won four Southwest Conference championships in a five-year stretch when coach Bill Henderson returned from World War II (1946-50). The Bears also made two Final Four appearances, losing to Kentucky in the 1948 national championship game.
The best player in that Marrs McLean Gym era was Jackie Robinson, a two-time All-American who won a gold medal with the USA Basketball team at the 1948 Olympics.
In 1953, Baylor basketball moved off campus to the Heart O' Texas Coliseum, which was constructed after McLennan County voters authorized a bond issue of $1.2 million. The HOT was completed in the spring of 1953 and hosted its first game on Dec. 1, 1953, when the Bears defeated North Texas, 70-54.
With a seating capacity of 9,000, the HOT Coliseum hosted Baylor men's and women's basketball for 35 years, through the 1987-88 season. Future NBA standouts Vinnie Johnson and Terry Teagle lit it up in the arena in the late 1970s and early '80s, with the Bears finishing as the Southwest Conference runner-up in 1981 under coach Jim Haller.
Baylor's best stretch in the HOT years was making back-to-back postseason appearances in 1987 and '88. Led by Hall of Famers Micheal Williams and Darryl Middleton, the Bears played in the NIT in 1987 and then earned their first NCAA Tournament bid in 38 years the next season, losing to Memphis as a No. 11 seed.
Renamed the Extraco Events Center in 2010, the facility has also hosted rodeos, minor league hockey, arena football, WWE, monster truck rallies and concerts. From 2007 through 2021, it was also the home venue for the Varsity Equestrian National Championships until it was moved to the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Fla.
Built at a cost of $12.5 million, the Ferrell Center opened in 1988 and has been the home for Baylor men's and women's basketball for 36 seasons. The facility is named in honor of Charles Robert Ferrell, who tragically lost his life in a car accident in 1967 while he was a Baylor sophomore. A major portion of the construction cost was provided by the estate of the late Monroe Ferrell and his wife.
While the first basketball games weren't played at the Ferrell Center until November 1988, the inaugural event was actually a Republican Party Rally on Sept. 22. Ronald Reagan, the 40th and sitting U.S. President, was in town to trump for a number of candidates that included Baylor Law School graduate Beau Boulter in his unsuccessful campaign for the Senate.
In the first basketball game at the new on-campus facility, the Baylor men defeated an Australian professional team, the Adelaide 36ers, 75-57, in an exhibition game on Nov. 17, 1988. Baylor lost the first regular-season games, with the women falling to Southwest Texas State, 88-76, on Nov. 25 and San Diego State beating the BU men, 63-58, four days later.
Neither program had a lot of success in the 1990s, but the men and women have combined for more than 800 wins in the 10,284-seat arena with an overall winning percentage of .756 and have hosted a total of 35 postseason games.
Since making their first NCAA Tournament bid in 2001, the Baylor women have become one of the elite programs in the country, winning national championships in 2005, 2012 and 2019 while making the NCAA Tournament 21 times.
While Sophia Young was the cornerstone for the first championship, Brittney Griner and Odyssey Sims helped take the program to another level with the perfect 40-0 season in 2012 and then Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox were the key cogs in 2019.
Scott Drew's Baylor men ended a 20-year drought with an NCAA Tournament bid in 2008 and have made 14 postseasons overall, winning the NIT championship in 2013 behind MVP Pierre Jackson and the NCAA title in 2021 with All-American Jared Butler named the Final Four Most Outstanding Player.
Baylor is one of just four schools that have won both men's and women's national championships in the 42 years since the women switched from AIAW to NCAA, the others being UConn, North Carolina and Maryland.
Even when the basketball teams moving to the new Paul and Alejandra Foster Pavilion in January, the Ferrell Center will continue to be the home venue for the Baylor volleyball and acrobatics & tumbling teams.
Volleyball has made eight-straight NCAA Tournament appearances under coach Ryan McGuyre and reached the Final Four in 2019, while Fee Mulkey's A&T team has won three of its eight-straight NCATA national championships in the Ferrell.
There was a nine-month stretch from April 2019 through January 2020 when all four teams competing at the Ferrell Center achieved No. 1 national rankings.
Henry Howard, Baylor's Associate AD for Capital Projects and Championships, said the 7,500-seat Foster Pavilion will give Coach Drew and women's basketball coach Nicki Collen "the home-court advantage that they deserve and the student-athletes deserve."
"Foster is going to be amazing because of the proximity of the fan, the guests, to the court," Howard said. "The Ferrell Center is an amazing facility, too. It's had a lot of great memories, a lot of championships."
WACO, Texas -- Baylor basketball has certainly come a long way since playing its home games on an outdoor court at Carroll Field, which also happened to be the on-campus home for Baylor football.
Located between the Carroll Science Building and Waco Creek, Lee Carroll Field was also the home venue for Baylor's baseball and track and field teams in the early 1900s, with Baylor defeating TCU, 6-3, in the football team's first Homecoming game on Nov. 25, 1909.
In the early 1920s, the Bears transitioned to an open-air wooden structure for a short time before moving to their first full-time basketball facility in 1938, the on-campus Rena Marrs McLean Gymnasium.
The home for Baylor basketball from 1938 to 1953, the 3,500-seat arena was named after the mother of Texas oilman Marrs McLean, who donated the lead gift toward the building's construction.
Originally proposed in 1914 by the Baylor student body as The Bath House to "serve as training quarters for our athletic teams," Marrs McLean Gym still stands 85 years later with academic rooms for health and human performance classes and the full-length basketball court, along with coaches' offices, a team locker room and a separate training area for the eight-time national championship Acrobatics & Tumbling team.
At one point, Marrs McLean also housed all of the athletics department offices until they moved with football to Baylor Stadium in 1950.
During a 15-year run, the arena had several packed sellouts and hosted a Baylor men's basketball team that won four Southwest Conference championships in a five-year stretch when coach Bill Henderson returned from World War II (1946-50). The Bears also made two Final Four appearances, losing to Kentucky in the 1948 national championship game.
The best player in that Marrs McLean Gym era was Jackie Robinson, a two-time All-American who won a gold medal with the USA Basketball team at the 1948 Olympics.
In 1953, Baylor basketball moved off campus to the Heart O' Texas Coliseum, which was constructed after McLennan County voters authorized a bond issue of $1.2 million. The HOT was completed in the spring of 1953 and hosted its first game on Dec. 1, 1953, when the Bears defeated North Texas, 70-54.
With a seating capacity of 9,000, the HOT Coliseum hosted Baylor men's and women's basketball for 35 years, through the 1987-88 season. Future NBA standouts Vinnie Johnson and Terry Teagle lit it up in the arena in the late 1970s and early '80s, with the Bears finishing as the Southwest Conference runner-up in 1981 under coach Jim Haller.
Baylor's best stretch in the HOT years was making back-to-back postseason appearances in 1987 and '88. Led by Hall of Famers Micheal Williams and Darryl Middleton, the Bears played in the NIT in 1987 and then earned their first NCAA Tournament bid in 38 years the next season, losing to Memphis as a No. 11 seed.
Renamed the Extraco Events Center in 2010, the facility has also hosted rodeos, minor league hockey, arena football, WWE, monster truck rallies and concerts. From 2007 through 2021, it was also the home venue for the Varsity Equestrian National Championships until it was moved to the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Fla.
Built at a cost of $12.5 million, the Ferrell Center opened in 1988 and has been the home for Baylor men's and women's basketball for 36 seasons. The facility is named in honor of Charles Robert Ferrell, who tragically lost his life in a car accident in 1967 while he was a Baylor sophomore. A major portion of the construction cost was provided by the estate of the late Monroe Ferrell and his wife.
While the first basketball games weren't played at the Ferrell Center until November 1988, the inaugural event was actually a Republican Party Rally on Sept. 22. Ronald Reagan, the 40th and sitting U.S. President, was in town to trump for a number of candidates that included Baylor Law School graduate Beau Boulter in his unsuccessful campaign for the Senate.
In the first basketball game at the new on-campus facility, the Baylor men defeated an Australian professional team, the Adelaide 36ers, 75-57, in an exhibition game on Nov. 17, 1988. Baylor lost the first regular-season games, with the women falling to Southwest Texas State, 88-76, on Nov. 25 and San Diego State beating the BU men, 63-58, four days later.
Neither program had a lot of success in the 1990s, but the men and women have combined for more than 800 wins in the 10,284-seat arena with an overall winning percentage of .756 and have hosted a total of 35 postseason games.
Since making their first NCAA Tournament bid in 2001, the Baylor women have become one of the elite programs in the country, winning national championships in 2005, 2012 and 2019 while making the NCAA Tournament 21 times.
While Sophia Young was the cornerstone for the first championship, Brittney Griner and Odyssey Sims helped take the program to another level with the perfect 40-0 season in 2012 and then Kalani Brown and Lauren Cox were the key cogs in 2019.
Scott Drew's Baylor men ended a 20-year drought with an NCAA Tournament bid in 2008 and have made 14 postseasons overall, winning the NIT championship in 2013 behind MVP Pierre Jackson and the NCAA title in 2021 with All-American Jared Butler named the Final Four Most Outstanding Player.
Baylor is one of just four schools that have won both men's and women's national championships in the 42 years since the women switched from AIAW to NCAA, the others being UConn, North Carolina and Maryland.
Even when the basketball teams moving to the new Paul and Alejandra Foster Pavilion in January, the Ferrell Center will continue to be the home venue for the Baylor volleyball and acrobatics & tumbling teams.
Volleyball has made eight-straight NCAA Tournament appearances under coach Ryan McGuyre and reached the Final Four in 2019, while Fee Mulkey's A&T team has won three of its eight-straight NCATA national championships in the Ferrell.
There was a nine-month stretch from April 2019 through January 2020 when all four teams competing at the Ferrell Center achieved No. 1 national rankings.
Henry Howard, Baylor's Associate AD for Capital Projects and Championships, said the 7,500-seat Foster Pavilion will give Coach Drew and women's basketball coach Nicki Collen "the home-court advantage that they deserve and the student-athletes deserve."
"Foster is going to be amazing because of the proximity of the fan, the guests, to the court," Howard said. "The Ferrell Center is an amazing facility, too. It's had a lot of great memories, a lot of championships."
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