The Noon Basketball Association

When I first joined the staff of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association in 2008, I quickly set out in search of pickup basketball. I’ve played hoops for years, and I figured a college campus would be an easy place to find a game.

One day around noon, I climbed up to the fourth floor the Campus Recreation Center where, on a far court, I found a group in the midst of a hard-fought game. The players were a mix of faculty, staff and students, with more than five decades separating the oldest from the youngest.

One player in particular stood out, a shorter man well beyond retirement age. He might have lost a step over the years, but he made up for it with an uncanny sense of how to move without the ball and an unerring jump shot.

Over the next few years, he stopped showing up. But I kept playing, off and on, in what I came to know as “the noon game.” Other guys mentioned that the game had been played on campus for several years, but no one knew just how long.

Then, this March, I received a phone call from John Cerny, ME 51, MS IM 56. Cerny called to ask about a story that had appeared years ago in the Alumni Magazine, but he also casually mentioned a lunch he was planning for veterans of what he called the “Noon Basketball Association.”

“Is that the game played at the CRC on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?” I asked.

“Oh,” Cerny said. “So you’re one of the new guys.”

A few days later, I ventured over to the Ferst Place restaurant in the Student Center and joined 30 or so veterans of the game for a reunion.

When I saw Cerny, I realized he was the older player with the accurate jump shot from when I first joined the game. Without knowing it, I had shared the court with a then-76-year-old who had helped found the league decades earlier.

Cerny shared the group’s origin story. One day in either 1959 or 1960—nobody remembers which—a handful of Tech faculty and staff members lamented that the wind and rain prevented them playing their usual noon paddleball game in Peters Park. Someone suggested that the group go to the Old Gym, where they could play basketball in the Naval Armory.

That initial group included Cerny; John Burson, ChE 56, MS Met 63, PhD ChE 64; Dick Johnson, Phys 53, MS Phys 58, PhD Phys 61; Allen Ivey, ME 56; and Byron Gilbreth, Whack Hyder’s assistant coach. They came to call it the Noon Basketball Association—NBA for short.

In the nearly five decades since, the players, rules and even the court have changed, but one thing has remained constant: Basketball is played, and it’s played at noon.

Over plates of fried chicken, old-timers and “youngsters” (in their 40s and 50s) shared stories. “Early on, it wasn’t easy getting enough players to show up and sometimes it was only two against one, two against three half-court, or full-court three on three, which proved pretty exhausting,” Cerny said.

Ivey recalled epic battles against Allen Ecker, EE 57, MS EE 58, who had played football in college. And he reflected on Johnson’s unconventional style.

“I miss old Dick Johnson,” Ivey said. “He would shoot a two-handed set shot. He didn’t make many, but if he made the first one, you’d better guard him, or he’d make them all day.”

Jim Cofer, EE 67, MS EE 69, joined the NBA a few years into its run. He worked at the Georgia Tech Research Institute under Johnson and Ecker, who would walk down the hall and roust coworkers to play.

“It was a great equalizer,” Cofer said. “On the court, you’re all on the same level.”

When the Armory was closed, the group would play in the Old Gym. Or they would gather in Peters Park, where the outdoor concrete courts made for plenty of scrapes and bruises.

Veterans discussed their various injuries: sprained ankles, broken fingers, balky knees and slipped disks. Several recalled instances of lining up against teams of students who assumed they would run the geezers out of the gym. But—in these memories at least—the old guys always triumphed with a blend of smart ball-movement and good communication on defense.

The game later moved to the practice gym beside Alexander Memorial Coliseum (and sometimes even inside the coliseum), and to the Student Athletic Center once it was built in 1977. When the SAC closed for renovations, the game continued, moving to courts at Georgia State University or even to an outdoor court at the home of one player.

John Barry, a player and a professor of electrical and computer engineering, recalled being forced out of the SAC and finding a court at O’Keefe Gym that had a volleyball net stretched across it. Undaunted, the players went on with the game, taking care to duck every time they crossed midcourt.

One player forgot, though, and ran full-steam into the net, bounced back and hit the ground. “He was out for a minute,” Barry said, prompting laughter from the group.

For several years now the NBA has had a steady home at the CRC, which allows the group an exception to its rule requiring shirts be worn at all times. The NBA has always been “shirts and skins.”

Most of the group gathered for lunch had retired from the game, but as they relived past victories, several said they would try to make it back out on the courts.

“Some of my favorite memories at Tech are of noon basketball,” said Sudhakar Yalamanchili, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. “I stopped playing about seven years ago. The mind is willing, but the body is weak.”

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