North Medford High gym treasures retrieved to help keep history alive
Published 2:15 pm Tuesday, March 25, 2025
North Medford High School athletic director Piet Voskes and crews worked to remove decades of athletics awards and memorabilia from the NMHS gymnasium after it collapsed Feb. 11. Pictured, Voskes holds us a plaque from a 1959-1960 "triple crown," when NMHS won the Southern Oregon Conference for football, baseball and basketball. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
North Medford High School athletic director Piet Voskes and crews worked to remove decades of athletics awards and memorabilia from the NMHS gymnasium after it collapsed Feb. 11. Pictured, Voskes holds us a plaque from a 1959-1960 "triple crown," when NMHS won the Southern Oregon Conference for football, baseball and basketball. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
North Medford High School athletic director Piet Voskes looks through trophies and memorabilia dating back to the days of Medford High School, before the schools split into North and South Medford high schools. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
The North Medford High School gym, pictured March 19, has been 50% demolished. Engineers are working to assess a plan for rebuilding the structure and to determine how much of the structure, if any, can be salvaged. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
Trophies and memorabilia from more than 60 years of Black Tornado athletics were previously displayed in the now-collapsed North Medford High School gym. NMHS athletic director Piet Voskes holds the 1943 state track title for Medford High School. (Buffy Pollock / Rogue Valley Times)
Athletic director Voskes says ‘there are life lessons’ here as he praises students’ perseverance after Feb. 11 roof collapse
Just minutes before the North Medford High School gymnasium roof collapsed on Tuesday, Feb. 11, athletic director Piet Voskes was driving toward the Keene Way Drive campus with a stack of oversized storage bins in his vehicle.
A small crack had appeared in a structural beam supporting the 60-year-old gym just days earlier on Friday during a girls basketball team practice, but Voskes had no clue how badly things would turn in short order at the facility.
Voskes and school officials sprang to action initially with thoughts primarily on safety — leading to an immediate evacuation and fencing off of the gym area — while also focusing on alternate locations for upcoming sports events and physical education classes.
As the cracks widened and the situation began to appear more dire over the weekend, thoughts soon turned to a spirit of historic lineage for Voskes, who is as versed as any on the topic of Medford sports lore and knew full well the treasures lying in wait at the teetering site.
Hence his mission the morning of the collapse — to secure decades worth of cherished trophies and memorabilia once displayed inside the now ruined building.
“We didn’t know everything was coming down, but we just said, ‘Even if it was going to be under construction, do we want all this to be in there?’” Voskes told the Rogue Valley Times last week.
“As I’m pulling up with the bins to go in, the beam comes down.”
Hours later, after full collapse of the roof, Voskes and crew resumed plans to safely access and empty display cases sitting adjacent to the piles of rubble. Much to their delight, the damage to that area was less severe than initially anticipated, and they were able to salvage memorabilia near and dear to Black Tornado faithful.
Some memorabilia kept in adjacent team locker rooms and coaches’ offices, however, were not as easily recoverable.
Built in 1965, the gym had undergone a more than $3 million seismic retrofit last summer. A snowstorm in early February left a heavy snowpack on the flat roof structure over the main gym area.
After recognizing the initial issue, the district had planned for crews to shore up structural beams in order to allow engineering crews to assess whether a portion of the building could be salvaged. Following the subsequent full gym collapse, district officials are still conducting assessment but focusing on providing temporary space for student-athletes as rebuild plans are developed.
The North Medford High School gym, pictured March 19, has been 50% demolished. Engineers are working to assess a plan for rebuilding the structure and to determine how much of the structure, if any, can be salvaged.
As of last week, some 50% of the gym has been demolished, with results of assessments anticipated by early April.
North Medford transitioned its home athletic events to Oakdale Middle School for the remainder of the winter sports season.
Voskes said the sudden loss of gym space left a big impact not only on students but for the Medford community at large.
Along with hosting decades worth of sporting events, pep rallies, homecoming dances and student assemblies for the school district, Voskes said the gym has served as a community hub.
“It was Rogue X before Rogue X,” said Voskes, who also serves as North’s cross country and track coach as well as an assistant principal. “It was used every weekend, a combination of a school gym and community landing spot. You had, obviously, sporting events, but proms, homecomings. … Bill Clinton spoke in that gym; the Harlem Globetrotters played there; the Trail Blazers practiced there.
“We had a gentleman at South whose father’s funeral was in that gym. … it was a hub for so many different activities,” he said.
In yet another important function — made more apparent by the unexpected collapse — Voskes said the old gym “doubled as a museum,” displaying decades of championship trophies and plaques for Black Tornado alumni.
“All the trophies in there were a measurement of all the sweat equity put in by so many different groups,” Voskes said, with North Medford High also adopting memorabilia from the bygone legendary days of Medford High.
While oversized panels remained on crumbled gym walls, indicating years in which the school had various championships, Voskes said those were less of a priority than trophies and plaques.
“Those we can recreate,” he said of the large placards. “The company that created all those — we have them ready to go and they have the template to still do it. … A 1966 trophy, we can’t replicate, those we had to get out.”
Voskes said items will be stored in a climate-controlled, off-site facility while the gym is rebuilt. Eventually, a return of trophy cases will ensure familiarity and sense of place in the new space.
“I think that if there’s a long red thread that’s connecting the old with the new, that was going to be the bridge,” he said of the display cases.
Boxing up trophies in the school theater last week, Voskes was nostalgic at the historic account of school athletics sitting inside black plastic bins on the backstage.
Trophies and memorabilia from more than 60 years of Black Tornado athletics were previously displayed in the now-collapsed North Medford High School gym. NMHS athletic director Piet Voskes holds the 1943 state track title for Medford High School.
Holding a 1943 state track championship trophy, he marveled that many of the team’s athletes celebrated such a big win and were “drafted and were then fighting World War II within a year.”
“The other part of this is their head coach, Bill Bowerman, had already been picked up,” added Voskes. “He’d been drafted. So, Bowerman is fighting in the war, meanwhile, back at Medford High, his kids he coached are winning the state track title.”
Some of the trophies and plaques list names of team players, while others do not.
“That will be the addition we make,” said Voskes. “We’re going through yearbooks and, when we reopen, these trophies will have everybody who was on (the team).”
“Our goal is to make sure that every trophy has their names and coaches, and just the ability to know, ‘That was Grandpa’s team.’”
Voskes paused while looking at the 1985 football championship trophy, which he said was an important moment in district history.
“Medford High was closing. It was going to be split into two, four-year high schools. They wanted to go out with the state championship,” he said.
“This one we get the most questions on when people come in. They all wanna know, ‘Where’s the ‘85 trophy?’”
Trophies aside, Voskes said the now crumbled gym walls on which generations of pep rallies have echoed, are now part of the school’s history and will help shape plans for its replacement.
“You hear a lot of people who say that when it opened, it was the modern gym, it was the premier space,” he said.
“They talk about the luxuries, the size of it. You talk to referees who say, ‘I loved that gym because they had so much space — I never ran into a fan.’ All these things you take for granted. … There were some (design) nuances to it that just made a lot of sense. It makes you think, ‘OK, when it’s rebuilt, what do we now do intentionally to make it work for the next 60 years?’”
Voskes said community support throughout the ordeal has been heartwarming, and that student resilience had created positivity out of misfortune.
“We’ve talked a lot about dealing with adversity, which is what athletics is, right? These kids, these teams, have essentially lived out of their cars, and we’ve looked for — and used — every gym available. … Our girls basketball team has made the full tour — they hit every middle school, used elementary schools — and yet they still made the playoffs,” he said.
“We said to them, and we apologized, but we emphasized, ‘Any other future group’s gonna talk about adversity, and it’s almost gonna be laughable. You’re the group, the new template of how to handle things the right way, with grace,’” Voskes said.
“They never complained. They just asked, ‘Where do I need to be? What time?’ Pretty mature for a group of 16- and 17-year-olds.”
Voskes said he looked forward to closing the chapter on the gym collapse and embracing a new facility.
“There are life lessons there — and I wish (students) didn’t have to learn them right now — but that’s the reality of it, and they’ve handled it well. They persevered,” he said.
“We’re still going to have some hiccups. … I’m not sure what next January is gonna look like on a cold day (for PE classes) … but we’ll figure that out, and I just applaud all the caring adults and the way our community has rallied around the kids and supported them.”
Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 458-488-2029 or bpollock@rv-times.com. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal.
