There's no room for basketball in the APEX, which is serving a far more important function at Lehman right now.

Three weeks after superstorm Sandy, Lehman’s basketball teams are still waiting to get their arena back.

While millions of New Yorkers were affected by flooding and power loss, Lehman powered on.  

The campus saw a few downed wires and a couple of trees knocked over, but Lehman was not hit as hard as other areas in the Bronx or New York City.

Days before the storm hit, in anticipation of the vast destruction, Lehman College, one of the main evacuation centers in New York City, opened its main sports facility, the APEX, to accommodate nearly 300 evacuees. And many are still there.

“They are in the whole bottom floor. Everywhere. The aerobics room, the auxiliary gym, they are in the hallways,” Steve Schulman, the head men’s basketball coach said by phone.

The main basketball arena is being used for the recovery workers, and the weight room has been transformed into a pharmaceutical room, necessary for the evacuees of the three nursing homes that have relocated to Lehman.

The men’s and women’s basketball teams have been forced to practice in an old gymnasium on the other side of campus that hasn’t been used since the early 1980s and is shared with the High School of American Studies, where Schulman serves as the athletic director and a P.E. teacher.

Ironically, just five years ago the gym was used as for storage, housing desks, and other unneeded items. When the high school started using the gym they cleaned it up to make it feasible for physical education classes. It has gone from a reclamation project to being used by both Division III men’s and women’s basketball teams.

It’s one of those old fashioned courts. Backcourt isn’t the middle of the gym, it’s on the other side. There is no three-point line. There is no restricted zone on the court – no clock – and a few dead spots.

“The court is not regulation, but it’s doable. It has two hoops, it has lines, it’s a basketball court. The gym is really hot, but we deal with it,” senior guard Jasmin Castro-Lopez said.

Because the facility is shared with the high school, and student-athletes still have class to schedule around, practice time is tough to find. The women’s basketball team has been practicing from 6 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

“Which for us is a little different, we are a commuter school. So we have girls coming from Queens and Brooklyn making an hour trip to get there,” Eric Harrison, the head women’s coach said.

The season won’t wait for the team to get ready, however. “We know that we have a long season ahead and we have some new people on the team. So we are just getting ready for the season. No one is really worried if we have 6 a.m. practices. No one is complaining, we are really just focused on our season,” Lopez said.

The men’s team has taken the late shift the past week. They have been running from 8 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

“That means you are not getting them back to their home until after midnight. It’s not like they walk down and go into the dorms.” Schulman said. “It’s been a crazy preseason, that’s for sure.”

There is no timetable for when Lehman will regain their basketball courts. Use of other athletic facilities are slowly returning. On Friday, Nov. 16, access to the cardiovascular fitness center and locker rooms will return.

Earlier in the week, the entire lower level of the APEX was unavailable, including the pool, weight room, tennis courts, handball courts, dance and aerobics studios, saunas, and the main and auxiliary gyms, which remain off limits.  

Harrison, who also serves as the assistant athletic director for scheduling, has already started rescheduling some of Lehman’s events to play at alternate venues.

The men’s basketball team will open up their season next week with a “home game” at Mount St. Vincent, which is about a mile away from Lehman. The women’s basketball team is going to open up its home schedule Saturday with a game at Manhattan College.

According to the coaches, no student-athlete has complained yet, even though they have not had a home game in over a year.  

Last year during Hurricane Irene, the same gym was used as an evacuation center, and it took on water that caused severe structural damage to the wood surface. The men and women had to play all their games on the road last season.

“We have some great young men and women. They all understand that there are other people who are more needy of our facility,” Harrison said.

Besides just sacrificing their gym space, Harrison, Schulman and their assistants have volunteered time helping out FEMA and the Red Cross, too.

“You realize that their lives are affected more than our basketball,” Schulman said. “The evacuees have lost everything. I don’t think they want to be here. It’s just the option that they have right now.”

Some Red Cross volunteers have pledged to come watch a basketball game or two this year, and support the college, while many of the displaced people have expressed sorrow for taking up their facilities.

“I let them know. This is not something to apologize for. They have lost a lot more than we have,” Eric said.

On the days the equipment manager is given access to the washers to clean the practice uniforms, the athletes walk through the halls to pick up their gear, and notice the people’s pain.

“They see life is pretty short, life is precious, things can be taken from them. They will appreciate things that have been taken for granted,” Harrison said. “So I think they will appreciate when we get back into the main arena, when we get back into having a treadmill, having a weight room and things like that.”

Until then, the teams still need to prepare for a looming season. The men’s team has made a conscious effort to make everything quicker when they are doing conditioning drills and running drills due to the short court.

Because of Sandy, Lehman was unable to practice for a full week. There was no transportation, no way to get the student-athletes to campus. That was the first setback. The limited practice space has also created difficulties.

After the women’s first scrimmage, Harrison admitted that his team’s conditioning wasn’t where it should be, not in a normal season. 

They women are working hard, but this weekend they will have to adjust from the smaller confines of their makeshift gym to a regulation size one, when they open up at Emmanuel.

The players don’t mind less running, but they do miss things they have taken for granted for years: electric stimulation or ice. There is no machinery, or anything like that for the kids.

But any time the men’s team gets a little bit frustrated, Schulman walks to his office, where he can look down through the windows and see all the people living in the gym, three weeks later.

All the evacuees, all the nameless, homeless, displaced people are lined up together kind of like at a hospital – but there are no curtains, just bed after bed.

“It just, it makes me realize how fortunate I am going to work, and my guys going to school and playing basketball. All the while, 300 people are living in a gym.”