Timber Products supplies Ducks basketball flooring
Matt Arena floor 145.jpg
March 14, 2011 - Iconic. Ground-breaking. Trendsetting. These are just some of the descriptions of the eye-catching basketball court at the new Matthew Knight Arena on the University of Oregon campus. The facility replaced Macarthur Court, which had served as home of the Ducks’ athletic teams since the 1920s.

Made by Connor Sports Flooring with 100 percent FSC certified, Northern hardwood maple from Timber Products Company, the floor had its national debut in January and introduced the country to a revolutionary graphic design: the view from a forest floor looking upthrough the tree canopy toward the sky above.

“The University of Oregon is special to Timber Products Company and all its employees,” said Joe Gonyea III, chief operating officer. “Our involvement in the new arena meant a lot to our family and company, so to provide the material used for the country’s most talked about basketball floor was an honor. We love the floor design by Tinker Hatfield, vice president for design and special projects for Nike, and feel it represents the Pacific Northwest and the wood products industry quite well.”

Connor Sports Flooring, which also uses Timber Products material to manufacture the floors each year used in the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments, said this is a first for the  company that has been building floors since the 1800’s.

“Graphics-wise, this floor blows the mind,” said Gary Gray, a company representative. “In fact, we used miles of graphics stencil on the floor. That’s more than we normally use in an entire year for all of our courts.”

Hatfield credited his inspiration for the floor from Oregon’s tree-covered region and the school’s 1939 NCAA championship basketball team nicknamed the “Tall Firs.”

For more information on the Timber Products materials used in the Matthew Knight Arena court project, contact Mike Fox at (906) 779-2000.

Arena Court Fast Facts:

Materials
• Wood donated from Timber Products Co. hardwood lumber mill in Munising, Mich.
• Connor Sports Flooring Quicklock Portable Floor
• Manufactured in the upper peninsula of Michigan in the town of Amasa, Mich.
• 6,944 square feet of Northern Hard Maple from an FSC certified forest
• Fabrication of raw floor took one week to complete
• 225 interlocking panels weighing approximately 45,000 total pounds

Graphics
• Completed by United Services based in Idaho Falls, Idaho
• 2,500 man hours to complete
• Miles of stencil material was utilized for the completion of the graphics
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