The arena was renamed in 1981 for Wallis Beasley (1915–2008),[6] a long-time sociology professor and executive vice president,[7] shortly before his retirement from the university. He was WSU's faculty representative for athletics in the 1960s and also served as interim university president.[8][9][10] For its first eight years, the venue was known as "Washington State University Performing Arts Coliseum."
The building used "space frame" construction, relatively novel at the time.[11] The elevation of the court is approximately 2,550 feet (775 m) above sea level.
The project was approved by the WSU board of regents in early 1969.[12][13]
First events
The building's inaugural event in 1973 was the university's commencement exercises on June 3.[3][4][5][14] Its first sporting event was an NBA exhibition game between Seattle and Portland on September 25, 1973.[15][16] The first major concert was Three Dog Night on Friday, October 5; tickets were five dollars.[17][18]
The first collegiate sporting event was a men's varsity basketball game against LSU on December 1, immediately preceded by a freshman game.[19][20][21] The visiting Tigers were led by second-year head coach Dale Brown, previously an assistant at WSU (1971–72). Intercollegiate basketball was formerly played in Bohler Gymnasium, which opened in 1928 and is now home to Cougar volleyball.
Friel Court
Located on the east side of campus, the building includes the home arena for Cougars men's and women's basketball. It is named Friel Court in honor of Jack Friel(1898–1995), the longtime head coach of the WSU men's basketball team, who led the Cougars to 495 victories in 30 seasons.
Friel stepped down as head coach in 1958 and five years later became the first commissioner of the Big Sky Conference, originally based in Pullman (from 1963 to 1971), because that's where he lived. The court was named for Friel in late April 1977, announced by President Glenn Terrell at a meeting of the board of regents;[22] the dedication ceremony was at halftime on December 3.[23]
The 1975 tournament expanded to 32 teams and the sub-regional had just two games:[28][29][30]Big Sky champion Montana(20–6) and second-ranked UCLA(23–3) advanced on Saturday night before 10,500. Pac-8 champion UCLA trailed Big Ten runner-up Michigan by four at halftime and needed overtime to win by twelve.[31][32] In the opener, WSU alumnus Jud Heathcote's Montana beat independent Utah Stateby six.[33] Five days later in the Sweet Sixteen in Portland, UCLA defeated the Grizzlies by a mere three points;[34][35] the Bruins continued on and won a tenth national title in 12 seasons, and hall of fame head coach John Wooden retired.
By 1982, the tournament had 48 teams and its Pullman sub-regional had four games with six teams, headlined by the Northwest's top two teams, fourth-rankedOregon State(27–4) and #8 Idaho(26–2). Both were seeded with first-round byes and advanced: Oregon State dispatched Pepperdine and Palouse neighbor Idaho outlasted Iowa in overtime to advance to the Sweet Sixteen,[25] with 12,340 in attendance on Sunday afternoon.[36][37][38] The next week in Provo, Utah, OSU eliminated Idaho, then was defeated by Georgetown, the eventual runner-up.
The 1984 tournament had 53 teams and six played in Pullman on the new hardwood. WSU's archrivalWashington beat Nevada then upset third-seeded Duke,[39] while eventual champion Georgetown outlasted SMU37–36 before over 10,500 spectators on Sunday afternoon.[40][41]
In addition to basketball, the building's full name reflects its use for concerts, big-name speakers, dinners, and commencement. Beasley may be reconfigured for seating capacities of 12,000 in the round to 9,000 in an end-stage configuration for concerts, to 2,500 in a theater configuration using an extensive system of fly-in curtains, an adjustable cloth scrim ceiling, and a portable proscenium stored under the floor.
The original opera house/theater configuration featured one of the first synthesized acoustical environments using surround speaker systems. An onsite reverberation chamber tuned with fiberglass panels for the specific acoustical configuration was combined with the first commercial use of a digital delay line, the Lexicon DD1, then fed to the side and overhead speakers. When properly set up, it was capable producing a very convincing acoustical rendition of a theater, an opera house, or by changing the delay settings and retuning the reverb chamber, even a cathedral. Unfortunately, a sewer drain line had been installed from the southeast corner restroom facilities through the reverb chamber, and if a toilet flushed when the system was in operation, the resulting sound effect was extraordinary. After discovering that, locking the restroom was a management priority whenever the theater was prepared for surround sound use. More recently full digital reverberation replaced the chamber.
For many years, the Coliseum has been the venue for the Great Performances series, organized by the Festival Dance and Performing Arts Association of neighboring Moscow, Idaho.
Overflow crowds attended lectures by Noam Chomsky on April 22, 2005, and by Jane Goodall on March 8, 2007.
Due to a shortage of student housing in September 1975, the two-year-old Coliseum temporarily housed 80 men for several weeks and was dubbed the "Cougar Hilton."[44]
