.The floors for the men’s and women’s tournaments were made by Horner Flooring of Dollar Bay, Mich., near Houghton, and much of the wood was supplied by Menominee Tribal Enterprises of Neopit.
The floors for the tournaments — the men’s to be played beginning April 2 in St. Louis and the women’s beginning April 3 in Indianapolis — are under wraps in Dollar Bay, awaiting delivery to the sites. The NCAA is a wee bit proprietary about its floors, so no one is allowed even to view them in advance.
While they are just gym floors, they are very good gym floors, made to look marvelous and bounce true.
Each consists of about 225 panels, 215 of which are 4 feet by 8 feet, and the remaining 4 feet by 4 feet. The wood is hard maple and the logos hand-painted. Floors like these would cost about $90,000.
Horner Flooring "loves our wood. Where it goes as a final product is really cool," said Bill Schmidt, director of marketing for Menominee Tribal Enterprises.
This is not the first time the two companies have scored with the NCAA. Menominee Tribal Enterprises and Horner together have been making Final Four floors since at least 1985. Horner, which has 100 employees, has been making hardwood flooring since 1891, the same year that James Naismith was credited with inventing basketball.
Horner has made floors for the NBA, WNBA, the Olympics, colleges and high schools. It makes floors for volleyball, handball, racquetball, squash and badminton courts as well as aerobics, dance and multipurpose rooms. The company also offers synthetic floors.
The Resch Center floor in Ashwaubenon was made by Horner.
Mark Young, vice president of operations for Horner, said maple, much of it from the Menominee forest, is used because of its physical properties — "it has a good ability to not splinter and not sliver" — and because it looks good.
Young said the tournament floors aren’t the largest part of the company’s business, but "it’s the only really glamorous side of our business.
"It’s an awful lot of work, but we think it’s the premier basketball tournament in the world," Young said. "There is a lot of aura, whether it’s the men’s or the women’s."
Bill Gappy, sales manager for portable floors, agrees. He travels to the tournament sites to oversee the installation of the floors and sticks around "to make sure the floor doesn’t fall apart." Needless to say, that means he has to watch all the games. Not surprisingly, it’s a job he’s held onto for 20 years.
Horner owns the floors and offers to sell them to the winning teams after the tournament. Otherwise, they have no trouble finding other buyers.
In addition to the game floors, Horner made the floors for Hoop City, interactive fan festivals held in conjunction with the men’s and women’s Final Fours. Baseman Floors of Appleton provided the finishing work for the Hoop City floors, Young said.
Menominee Tribal Enterprises does more than provide wood for gym floors, too.
The tribe manages 235,000 acres on its reservation north of Shawano, producing about 20 million board feet of lumber annually from 14 species of wood.
Schmidt said the tribe has practiced sustainable management for more than 100 years. That means the trees are cut when it’s their time and not before.
"Our competitors have the right to know what’s hot in the market, what’s getting the best price right now," Schmidt said. "We don’t get the liberty. We are forest-driven. Our foresters say you are going to get this amount of aspen, this amount of hemlock.
"We have to find venues that will at least break us even on those types of species."
Menominee Tribal Enterprises employs about 200 people, including foresters, administrators and saw mill workers.
It is among a dozen key suppliers to Horner Flooring, so it’s possible that wood from some other sources has made its way into the floors, but Gappy said the Menominee maple is predominant.