Gym, track receive upgrades

As students and fans start coming back to school, they will see upgrades to facilities at the high school.

After a water pipe broke over Christmas break last year, the floor in the high school gym was damaged and needed to be replaced. Work on replacing the floor began after prom this spring and was able to be used last week.

The floor features a new center court logo and lighter wood. They also moved the south scoreboard to the north end. The south board has been replaced with a video board. The north scoreboard will move to the new auxiliary gym.

Operations manager Wayne Larsen said the old center court logo is currently in storage with hopes of being hung in the hallway where the current music rooms are.

While the gym floor is in and ready to be used, the installer will be back around Thanksgiving to fix a couple of spots that have some bubbling. Larsen said the floor by the east bleachers has some bubbling due to the first coat not being dry enough before putting on the second coat.

Sports teams have been practicing at the Venture Elementary gym. The volleyball team will have their first game on the new floor on Aug. 31.

At the track, they have been busy replacing the track and upgrading the scoreboard.

They added a set of bleachers to each end of the visitors side, which added another 340 seats to have nearly a thousand seats on the visitor side. The home bleachers have room for about 2,500.

“They came a week or so after school was out and they came in with skidloaders and basically peeled it off of the base,” Larsen said.

They put an asphalt base down then came back a couple of weeks ago to put two coatings and a spray coating. They also replaced the pink rock that was around the track with concrete.

Since the field was unable to be used for much of the summer, soccer and football teams had to practice on the grass west of the middle school.

The lines still need to be painted on the track, which is planned for September.

On the scoreboard, they added a speaker to the top.

“We added the ads on the top and speaker. That speaker is awesome,” said Craig Clayberg, activities director.