Peck Gymnasium - Oregon School for the Deaf

Jeremy Brahm, volleyball coach at Oregon School for the Deaf, passes along photos of Oregon School for the Deaf’s Peck Gymnasium, named for William “Bill” Peck. Built in 1963, the gym recently underwent a floor renovation courtesy of a fundraising plan. The previous floor was the hard, rubberized material common during the 70’s and it was replaced with a beautiful wood floor.

The walls also underwent some changes as well as they added the new logo to the south wall.

Jeremy writes:

“Here are the photos of the Peck Gym at Oregon School for the Deaf in Salem. The Peck Gym last year had rubberized floors and the school had decided that too many students were getting injured and they completed their fund raising for a new floor during the 2009-2010 school year.

The new floor is all wood, with purple and white lines to match the school colors. The newly adopted school logo was painted on the North wall of the gymnasium as well. Most of our opponents, when they visited the gym for the first time this year said that they loved the look of it. I have to admit that the gym looks great on the inside and I was often sweeping the floor before matches and practices trying to keep it clean.

Because the gym is used by the entire school, high school through elementary school, padding is placed on the east wall to prevent kids from getting injured in basketball games with the climbing rocks jutting out from the wall. For volleyball matches we can pull out the bleachers from both walls, but we only do that for our matches with Washington School for the Deaf.


For basketball, we raise the scorer’s table to enable the statisticians and scoreboard operator a clean view of the court.

What will sound strange is that this gym can be incredibly loud. Yes, a deaf school with a loud gym, but it is the truth. I am the head coach for volleyball and helped out with a tiebreaking match this fall with two hearing teams. There were probably only 20-30 people in the stands and the girls on the court and the benches. I ran the scoreboard and there was one scorekeeper. She and I agreed during that match that it was incredibly loud, which with less than 80 people was amazing to me.

I told John Castrese the Athletic Director, who is deaf, that it was really loud. He looked at me and laughed. But it was loud with the sound just bouncing back and forth off the roof and walls. I try to make sure that I bring earplugs if I’m helping out during basketball games.”

The new floor and paint job at Oregon School for the Deaf looks fantastic. It is a very bright gymnasium and you can’t underestimate what a beautiful new floor can do for the look of a gym.


I like that it is still somewhat of a small gym and it has the stage on the end, but the new floor definitely gives the gym a serious upgrade.

Personally, I’m a big fan of simple gym floor design and in my opinion OSD hits it out of the park in that realm. They have stuck to simple lines and the traditional painted area. The “Home of the Panthers” on the baseline is another added feature that while kind of a small thing, is a nice touch for the current players and alums returning to watch games.

One thing that is interesting to me is the Oregon logo at midcourt which looks strikingly similar to the University of Oregon’s Mac Court. It might actually be the same font as University of Oregon’s. Knowing how particular the athletic department at the University of Oregon can be when it comes to their logos, fonts and images, I’m actually somewhat surprised that they permitted this. If there’s a back story to that, I’d love to know it.

Thanks to Jeremy for passing along the photos. His name and information were used with his permission.