Our Home Gyms

Part of the Frost Heaves’ mission is to help keep Main Street Vermont alive by filling classic downtown auditoriums with affordable family entertainment during the winter. In both Barre and Burlington, we play in buildings steeped in basketball tradition.


The phrase “We’re going to the Aud!” is a rallying cry around Vermont every February, as boys and girls from all but the largest high schools in the state vie for the chance to reach the Division II, III and IV final fours at the Barre Municipal Auditorium.
   Built in 1939 as a WPA project on the site of the former Goddard Seminary, the building atop Auditorium Hill was ridiculed at first as “Gordon’s Folly” after mayor John Gordon, who made it a personal crusade to see it built. Within two years the Aud had begun to host high school tournament basketball, with Randolph defeating St. Michael’s of Montpelier for the first title. During the Fifties, the professional forerunner of the Frost Heaves, the Vermont Vulcans, used the building as their home floor.
   The Aud is also the perennial site of the Vermont Farm Show, Gun Show and Home Show, and has played host over the years to performers from Johnny Cash to Phish. Today the Aud can comfortably seat 1,650 spectators for basketball, and in recent years locals have donated funds to add an elevator, a new floor, and new lighting. The mystique of the Aud has received national recognition, with USA Today calling it one of the nation’s “Ten Great Places to Watch High School Hoops.”
   Since its inception, the state tournament has thrived at the Aud because of the hard work of the local volunteers who are paid only with a free dinner—and because of the power of the dreams of the boys and girls who aspire to reach it each season. To merely take the floor of the Aud is an honor and accomplishment, as signified by the plaque, fashioned of Barre granite, that graces one wall of the lobby. The words are those of longtime tournament committee chairman James Hoag: “You’ve worked hard and good enough to get here. You can stand tall. For one game a season does not make, and there are no losers at the Aud,”
   The Frost Heaves drew their largest Barre crowd, nearly 1,800, to the Aud for their 143-95 defeat of Texas in the ABA Championship game on March 31, 2007.


Burlington’s Memorial Auditorium opened its doors on March 29, 1928, about two years after voters approved its construction in a bond issue. It cost the city $250,000 to construct the building, which architect Frank Austin designed to consist of a main floor, balcony, upstairs loft, large stage, exhibition hall, kitchen, meeting rooms, and enough seating for 2,500 people. Austin wanted a sound, fireproof building with sensible entrances and exits, not a pretty one—so no money was earmarked for decorating the building, inside or out.


   Memorial hosted its first major event, the Elks Charity Ball, a dozen days after opening, and soon thereafter came to be used for everything from political conventions to high school graduations. During the late Sixties the basement briefly housed the Fletcher Free Library while the library underwent construction. A decade later, following an altercation between concertgoers and police, rock concerts were banned for a period of five years, but Memorial’s principal attraction had returned by the early Eighties, and the building has remained a popular concert venue ever since.
   Basketball teams became regular tenants during the Fifties and Sixties, when the University of Vermont and St. Michael’s College both called Memorial home. Coach Bob Tipson’s Champlain College teams enjoyed a hugely successful run through the junior-college ranks during the Eighties and Nineties, with Memorial serving as their home floor. Although Champlain no longer fields intercollegiate teams, and the Catamounts and Purple Knights have long since moved home games to their respective campuses, youth and adult rec league players continue to populate the Memorial hardwood. The City of Burlington’s Parks and Recreation Department, caretakers of Memorial, refinished and repainted the floor and installed new backboards in advance of the Frost Heaves’ arrival in 2006.
   The Frost Heaves’ largest Burlington crowd, more than 1,400, filed into Memorial to watch Vermont defeat Strong Island 119-96 on January 20, 2007.