Where is East’s personality?

EDITOR:

I recently went to an Ursuline-East basketball game. The metal street sign and practice field welcoming me to the new East campus in place of the old high school was a sad sight. The gymnasium is a nice canvas, but it is blank. Aside from an American flag and a clock with a cage on it, the walls are white and it looks prisonesque. Even the floor has no symbol, nothing but black and blue lines.

The walls of the gymnasium should be covered in City Series and State banners from Rayen and East (the two schools that make the new East). One wall East, one wall Rayen. The gym needs the color, and the kids need to be connected to that history. It did not start in 2007, and the Panthers need to know that they are the 21st Century “High Flyin” Rayen Tigers. These kids must be shown that they come from champions. The banners from the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s could do just that. They are inspirational; the athletic heritage of the black, Italian, Latin and Jewish communities. They should not be ignored. Even if just three from each school were chosen; say one track, one basketball and one football, that might suffice. Brazenly, they should fill the walls and shock visitors from other cities and schools like they did me in 1997. Furthermore, the floor should sport a Sun, a Tiger, a Bear and a Panther, with the old “E” in the center.

If you forget where you came from it is impossible to understand where you are going. You are lost like memory gone bad, or a raisin in the sun.

DOMINIC GATTI Youngstown