La Salle set to play on a new basketball court, with a new name

Starting in 2024-25, the La Salle Explorers will play basketball in the same building off Olney Avenue, but shoot in a different direction. Tom Gola Arena is soon to get a renovation. The court will be turned kind of perpendicular so stands can surround the court on all sides.

“It’s needed,” Explorers men’s coach Fran Dunphy said of the coming upgrade. “I think everyone at the school is looking forward to the opportunity to be in a newer place.”

Another thing: It won’t be Tom Gola Arena.

Welcome to John Glaser Arena.

You may have heard about the impetus for this renovation. John Glaser, a 1962 La Salle graduate who died in October 2013, was a major benefactor of his alma mater, and put a gift in his will, a large donation toward a new basketball venue — with an interesting catch.

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Do something in 10 years or the gift goes away.

Here we are, and La Salle took it to the wire. That gift is now worth over $6 million, according to a La Salle source with knowledge of it, saying it was “just north of halfway” of the money raised for the project.

“Everyone knows we needed a new arena, and we are blessed to have this generous donation,” said La Salle athletic director Ashwin Puri.

It did come with another caveat, a source said, that if the money was used, the new place would be named for Glaser, the owner of the Stutz Candy Co., and that there would be a hospitality suite with his name on it.

A big change, and an eye-opening one, since Gola is and always will be the school’s basketball icon. But this gift was in the cards for a decade. It turns out, past La Salle administrators knew this day was coming.

“I don’t think Tom was ever somebody who worried about his name being on anything,” said Dunphy, who played for Gola and stayed close to him until Gola died in 2014.

Caroline Gola was on hand for Wednesday’s festivities. How would her husband feel about this?

“I think Tom would say go for it, I really do,” she said. “You have to move forward, and it’s a very big important jump for La Salle. What would Tom say? He would just say, it’s a business deal, go for it.”

Gola said she felt the same way.

“I asked for the Tom Gola Arena plaque out front,” Caroline Gola said. “I said I want that.”

Backing up her thought: Three decades back, La Salle, at another high point in its men’s hoops history, almost got started on a campus arena. According to sources, Gola himself had brought the plan to campus leaders, saying he would take personal charge of the fundraising. Plans were even drawn up.

This time, La Salle is going to pains to make sure Gola is properly honored as this change is made. There will be a Tom Gola Plaza outside where his statue is placed — and bigger plans are in the works.

Fans showing up for games or just driving on to campus off Olney Avenue, “They will enter on Tom Gola Way,” said La Salle president Daniel Allen.

When this coming season ends, the bleachers will be removed and the scoreboard taken down. The one offseason will change the place. Bells and whistles are to be added. The current arena is rooted in another era. Right now, “you can’t just flip a switch and go dark for intros,” said a La Salle source. “We’re hoping we can actually set a temperature range.”

Allen noted that Glaser family members told him how John Glaser “kept a notebook on the shooting percentages of visiting teams here,” how they’d shoot better because they were shooting toward a backdrop of a wall instead of an opposing fan base.

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“My hope is that this will be meaningfully different,” Puri said of the whole experience. “It’s going to create a very intense, loud, experience.”

The place might lose a few hundred seats, with 3,000 the expected capacity, down from the current 3,400. The final number, Puri said, might be just over or just under 3,000, the final number still to be determined.

Already true, when it comes to the name. But that was written into this before Glaser and even Gola himself died. La Salle is about to be the beneficiary.