History
The first event held in the Sawyer Center was SNU's annual Excel Auction on February 11, 1998. The first sporting event was one week later, when the men's and women's basketball teams took on their cross-town rivals from Oklahoma City University. The Crimson Storm defeated both teams.
From 2001 to 2008, the Sawyer Center was home to the championship games of the National Christian Homeschool Basketball Championships. Every year the event was held there, the Sawyer Center held capacity crowds. In the last 2 years of the tournament, people were being turned away because of firecodes.
Due to the catastrophic devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Hornets franchise temporarily relocated their base of operations to Oklahoma City for two seasons in 2005-06 and 2006-07. During this time, the franchise was known as the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets. In these two seasons, the vast majority of home games were played at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, while a few remained at New Orleans Arena. During the New Orleans Hornets temporary relocation to Oklahoma City, the Sawyer Center was the official practice facility for the Oklahoma City/New Orleans Hornets.
The Sawyer Center will also serve as the temporary practice facility for the new Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team, until a permanent facility is built.
Read more about this topic: Sawyer Center
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)