When Mr. Smith cleans the auxiliary gym floor, he attaches some gatorade towels to a broom and uses this contraption to wipe the floor of the gymnasium. As you can imagine, these towels become dirty. Very dirty. 

This leads to a very valid question: why were teenage Gibbons boys swarming into the gym to collect these gross towels to take home?

Apparently, it was because Cooper Flagg had deigned to step on the gym floor of our very own Cardinal Gibbons auxiliary gym. 

When the future No. 1 NBA Draft Pick steps foot in your high school, I guess you do anything you can to get even a small souvenir.

This isn’t the first time Gibbons has allowed high-profile teams or athletes to practice at our campus. 

From Notre Dame football to Bruno Mars, Gibbons has been home to a wide variety of prominent teams and individuals throughout the years.

According to Mr. Curatolo,who is often consulted when teams are trying to practice here, these situations most often occur from a series of varying connections between someone at Gibbons and someone with the specific affiliation. 

Bruno Mars’ presence here in 2017, for example, was a result of a PNC worker who knew an educator at Gibbons and were therefore able to set up a time for Mars to come and play in the aux gym. 

So in case you were ever wondering what Bruno Mars does all day before his shows, I guess the answer is play pickup basketball at local high schools? 

Meanwhile, teams such as Notre Dame football find Gibbons to be a good fit for practice for a variety of reasons.

First of all, Gibbons is a private school. While public school would have lots of rules and regulations to go through if teams/celebrities were trying to get practice space at their school, Gibbons has much more flexibility and lenience. (Note: Florida, the eventual men’s basketball national champion, did manage to practice at Panther Creek High School in Cary while it was in town.)

Secondly, unlike other schools in the area, Gibbons has turf fields. Playing on turf is what teams like Notre Dame are used to and they can be sure to practice on it no matter what the weather conditions.

Our basketball courts are a good fit as well due to the scarcity of windows. When teams desire a private practice without any cameras or or people watching, the lack of windows in our gym allows them to be guaranteed privacy.

So why did Duke, a Final Four team, pop out to Gibbons?

Yes, they do already reside in Durham, not too far from the Lenovo Center where they were scheduled to play later that day. However, with the efficiency between Cardinal Gibbons and Lenovo Center, along with Duke’s desire for a private practice, our school became the lucky host of one the best men’s basketball teams in the country. 

The list of notable teams and players to secretly visit Gibbons goes on: 

• UNC Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse
• Heisman winner Lamar Jackson from Louisville
• Notre Dame Football
• Stony Brook University
• Various CIAA Teams
• Notre Dame Soccer
• Bruno Mars

Those listed above and more have all set foot on our campus, securing immediate bragging rights for all of us at Cardinal Gibbons.