For as expensive as it was to play, a home football stadium was usually not a problem for GIA schools. A handful had their own individual stadiums, but the vast majority shared with the local GHSA school. The GIA institutions usually did not get Friday night home games, but they were allowed use of the stadium, be it on Thursday or Saturday or in such places as Columbus (Memorial Stadium) or Savannah (Grayson Stadium), Tuesday or Wednesday.

Not many situations arose. A.C. Carter of Summerville and Hill of Lafayette were scheduled to play at Summerville’s Sturdivant Stadium in 1956 but Georgia Attorney General Eugene Cook attempted to stop the game, citing the “separate but equal” mantra. Though neither Carter nor Hill had their own separate stadium. No follow-ups were printed, so it is unknown whether or not he was ultimately successful. In 1950, the city of Griffin told Fairmont High School to use its own field after years of sharing with Griffin High (and at that time, Spalding High). After two games and Fairmont reporting serious financial issues, Griffin once again allowed them to play at Lightfoot Park. The issue never again came up and the three – two after 1953 – continued sharing Lightfoot and later Memorial Stadium until Fairmont closed.

Football was not the most popular sport among GIA schools but yet it had better facilities. You see, a good many – if not most – GIA schools lacked a gym until the mid 1960s.

First, let me say that lacking a home gymnasium in the 1950s was not terribly unusual for white schools. Sandersville built one in the decade. Claxton canceled at least one season of basketball because it was tired of road games and literal home dirt. Lanier County had no gym, so the school auditorium became a multipurpose facility. Goals were erected, lines were painted, and all fans in Lakeland sat in seats with backs until the early 1960s. The University of Georgia lacked … oh, Woodruff Hall was a gymnasium? I thought it was a gazebo. Somebody once commented about fighting the winds and a floor slick from rainfall. Great gym, alright.

I will reiterate that most high schools had a real gym. Some had holes in the roof, some had out-of-bounds lines painted on the wall, some had misshapen wooden backboards, but most GHSA schools had a home gym.

This was not the case in the GIA. Unlike in football, no sharing of facilities between organizations existed. Outdoor games were probably nearly as common as indoor ones. Some schools, like Atkinson County Training managed to latch on to a school with a gym and play home games there. The Pearson school was close enough to Douglas to share their gymnasium.

By the early 1960s, the lack of a gym began to be an issue. Very, very few GHSA teams were left at this point without gyms, though a couple had to travel to get to them (Berrien and East Laurens in particular). In 1961, the mayors of both Greensboro and Union Point proposed building a facility for Corry High. Their effort was just as much generosity as it was to keep racial tensions at bay. After the girls of Peabody in Eastman won their second consecutive state crown in 1966, three letters to the editor appeared in the issue celebrating the accomplishment. All of them requested a gym for Peabody.

Because of the rarity of a real home floor, state tournaments were held at places normally considered strange. Douglass of Thomasville had a gym and thus hosted a few tournaments in the 1950s. The Waycross City Auditorium was all but ignored by the GHSA (though at least one sub-region tournament happened there). Center High used it to host state tournaments. Fairmont in Griffin, Carver High in Douglas, and in the 1960s Emanuel County in Swainsboro held tourneys. Diving even deeper into stranger territory, Alma Consolidated, Crawford County Training, and Atkinson County Training each had at least one state basketball tournament under their roofs. Atkinson County Training, by the way, had finally wrangled their own local gym in 1965.