Waltham’s pricey new high school gym falls short

Bleacher design limits basketball seating

The most expensive school in Massachusetts has a problem. The bleachers in the brand-new Waltham High School gym can never be used to their full capacity during basketball games, because they cover most of the court when completely extended.

Matthew McDonald, a Waltham High senior and captain of the boys’ basketball team, wrote a letter to city officials last year saying the bleachers had “a huge, disappointing issue” in how they were designed. In the letter he pleaded with officials to find a solution, calling the new gym “an extreme disappointment.” 

The school, completed in 2024, cost $374 million and received funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority. Buildings that receive money from the MSBA are normally allowed a 12,000-square-foot gym. However, Waltham school officials requested and were granted permission to build an 18,000-square-foot gym for its 1,800 students.

The gym contains two sets of roll-out bleachers that sit across from each other. Fully extended, they can seat 1,831 people, according to a letter by Waltham Mayor Jeannette McCarthy in September 2024, sent in response to McDonald’s letter. But the bleachers can only be partially extended during basketball games, or else they would cover two-thirds of the basketball court. Because of this quirk, the bleachers seat only 620 people during games.

In the letter McCarthy said this is not the gym’s full capacity, because people can stand. The gym can fit up to 1,479 people standing during a basketball game, bringing the total capacity to 2,199, she wrote. 

The Waltham Times asked McCarthy for an interview about the bleachers, but she insisted that questions be submitted to her in writing. She declined to be interviewed and instead forwarded a copy of her September 2024 letter.

The average attendance at boys’ basketball games this year has been around 275 to 300 people, while attendance at the girls’ basketball games averaged around 100 to 125, said the school’s athletic director, Steve LaForest. He declined to comment on the bleachers.

Even so, fans worry they won’t be able to find seats unless they show up early, said Mary Smerlas, an aunt of a Waltham High School basketball player.

“It is a consideration when you’re coming or not coming, how crowded it might be,” she said. She said that she and her husband usually get to the gym early, because she is worried that if they are late and it happens to be a more crowded day that they will be forced to stand. 

Smerlas’ husband, Chuck, said it’s not a big problem now, because the boys team has a record of 7-11 this year, while the girls team finished 10-10. But it will become an issue in seasons when they win more games and attract more fans.

“[The basketball team] is a competitive, hard-working team, but they’re probably not an elite team that’s drawing a huge crowd,” he said. “In the event that they do [become an elite team], you’re not going to be able to host those games.”

If the boys basketball team made it into a state tournament, it would only be able to host a first-round game, said Waltham High School boys basketball coach Mike Wilder, since tournament games naturally attract larger crowds.

“As soon as we moved to the second round, we would have to go someplace else. We wouldn’t be allowed to do it here,” he said. “And we have made those games in the last five years, multiple times, so it’s not something that doesn’t happen.”

The Waltham High School girls basketball team qualified for the state tournament this year, but no games will be played at the school. As the No. 33 seed in the tournament, they traveled to Arlington, the No. 32 seed, for their first game on Wednesday night.

In her letter McCarthy said Madden Field House at Kennedy Middle School — with a capacity of 4,000 — could host tournament games.

Wilder rejected that claim.

“Some people in the city have said that Kennedy Middle School would be an option, but if you understand basketball at all, it’s not,” he said. “It’s a rubber court, it’s slippery, the rims are aged – it just wouldn’t work.”

Alternative options include the gym in the old high school – which is now home to the Waltham Dual Language School – or asking nearby Brandeis University or Bentley University for permission to use their courts, Wilder said.

According to McCarthy’s letter, the gym was designed to accommodate the entire student body for assemblies and pep rallies. But those haven’t gone well either, McDonald said in an interview.

“I think it was messy,” McDonald said about a pep rally the school held earlier in the school year. “The way it was organized just wasn’t good.”

He said the bleachers were a big part of the reason.

“They were out all the way, and we were playing some weird games in the space between the bleachers because that’s all it would fit,” he said.

Old versus new

McDonald also said the gym in the old high school was much better. 

“It doesn’t even compare to the old high school,” he said. “The old high school was perfect.”

Others echoed McDonald’s sentiments about the old school.

“It feels like we don’t pack the stands like we did at the old high school,” said Melissa Abell-Bardsley, the mother of a player on the Waltham boys basketball team. “My son likes playing on the new court better than the old school, but I feel like the old gym got the crowd into [the game] more.”

“The old school looked perfect – it was just old,” said Fiona Murphy, a Waltham resident who enjoys watching the games. “This school looks new, but an error [in the bleachers] is visible.”

Wilder said the old school gym fit the school better. 

“The old gym just had character, and obviously the capacity was double what [the new high school] is,” he said. “The old school was built in 1969, and this one was built in 2025 – why would you go backwards?”

As designed

While the coaches were not technically excluded from discussions about the design of the gym, Wilder said, no member of the athletics staff was on the Waltham High School Building Committee, which chose the final design of the school. 

“I don’t think anybody at this point feels as though this was a mistake. This is what they decided to design and it was put in correctly,” he said. “But just because that’s the case doesn’t mean that we, as coaches and teachers and players, have to say that we think it’s the best possible situation. When you have a basketball gym and you limit the capacity to one-third, anybody in their right mind would say this is not ideal, right?”

Darrell Braggs, the Waltham High School principal and a member of the building committee, did not respond to a request for an interview.

SMMA, the Cambridge architecture firm that designed the school, also did not respond to repeated requests for interviews.

“I don’t wanna add any fuel to that fire,” Wilder said. “But I’m not gonna sit here as a basketball coach and say that this is ideal, because I don’t think it is.”

This story is part of a partnership between the Waltham Times and the Boston University Department of Journalism.