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Players get ready for the 4A second round game between Payson and Pine View at Payson on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025.

Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald

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A sign hangs over the door leading to the locker room in the gym at Payson High School.

Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald

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Banners hang in the rafters of the gym at Payson High School.

Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald

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The Payson pep band plays a song during the 4A second round game between Payson and Pine View at Payson on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025.

Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald

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A Lion logo sits next to the old scoreboard in the gym at Payson High School.

Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald

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Former Payson coach Dave Hiatt (left) talks to dean of students Kyle Francom during the 4A second round game between Payson and Pine View at Payson on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025.

Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald

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The school logo and sign for the Lions' Den sit on the wall of the gym at Payson High School.

Jared Lloyd, Daily Herald

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When it came time to decide where I was going to head to work on Feb. 14, I didn’t have to think for too long. I wanted to travel to the southern end of Utah Valley to bid farewell to an old friend.

For more than 20 years, I’ve enjoyed opportunities to go cover girls and boys basketball games in the gym at Payson High School.

But with a new school being built and the old one being torn down, last weekend was the final time that the squeak of gym shoes, the shouted directions of coaches, the cheers of fans, screech of whistles and the music from the Lion pep band will echo off the rafters for such an occasion.

I took a few minutes to just soak in the atmosphere of that monument to decades of Payson sports, to see the familiar sights that have been there for so long.

There are the banners in the rafters, honoring more than a century of Lion sports success. Payson has one honoring the state track title it won in 1917, one of the first state championships won by any Utah Valley high school.

I read the sign over the door leading to the stairs down to the home team’s locker room one more time, one that says “Do it like a champion” and is signed by D. Porter in 1989.

My gaze took in the big green ventilation arch that says Payson at one end and Lions at the other that still dominates the north side, while the double level of seating with the closable doors on the upper level as the hallmark of the south side.

The east and west walls are just beyond the end lines and I’ve dodged many a hard-charging athlete as they flew off the court and crashed into the padding while I was taking photos for the sports section.

And then there are my memories.

I recall the plethora of great Payson teams of the past, with so many tough, determined athletes who always seemed to give everything they had on that floor.

It was fitting that I got the chance to talk to former Lions girls basketball coach Dave Hiatt, since my first year covering high school basketball in 2004-05 was the year his Payson squad — led by Sandy Marvin and Mallory Bateman — won the school’s only basketball title.

I’ve been there for blowouts and nail-biters, rivalry matchups and tournament battles. I’ve seen that place packed to the roof and so loud that you almost have to cover your ears.

Lion dean of students Kyle Francom played for Payson in the late 1990s and recalled a barn-burner of a game against American Fork where the Lions scored a late bucket to force overtime. He said the sound that night was so deafening that you could’ve been screaming and not be able to hear yourself.

While the dramatic moments are certainly some of the easiest to recall, the reality is that old gym has been a home to countless Lion athletes and coaches. It’s where they have spent hours honing their craft and building life-long relationships.

“My sons and I have been here forever,” Payson head girls basketball coach Chad Bahr said last week. “My oldest son is 27 now and we started coming when we moved to Payson. We were here all the time.”

He was proud of the fact that his Lions closed that chapter of school history with a home win over Pine View (the Payson boys team also won its last game there, beating Desert Hills) and said he was going to take a moment to appreciate all of the time spent in that facility.

“After everybody’s gone tonight, I’m going to come in here and I’m just going to cry my eyes out,” Bahr said. “I love this gym. There’s nothing like it. It’s the old school gym. It’s loud, it’s rowdy. The floor is springy as heck. You can hear every fan say everything about every ref. It is so much fun and I’m going to really miss it. There’s nothing like the Lions’ Den and it’s home.”

I think it’s human nature to relish good memories of locations, which is what both Bahr and I did as we were talking about the gym.

But we both also realize that it’s long past time for Payson athletes to have a new place to work and perform. All of the Lions who use the gym for their sports deserve to have something more up to date and functional than what they’ve had.

I thought about how the end of an era is approaching, the end of the time at the old-school cracker-box high school gyms.

In northern Utah County, many of the older high schools like American Fork and Pleasant Grove still have the gyms where I covered games when I first started but have since built newer arena-style facilities.

The older schools in the south used their gyms longer but are in the process of upgrading to new buildings and thus removing their old gyms as well. Spanish Fork’s is already gone and Payson’s will be gone this year. Springville’s will likely be the last of that gymnasium design to be replaced when it wraps up its time in 2026.

And while there will be things I won’t miss — like the dim lights, the more frequent mechanical issues and crowded baselines — I will definitely miss the feeling of being there for a close game and the intensity of those big moments.

So farewell, you wonderful old Lions’ Den gym. Thanks for the memories.