Community chipping in for expanded GHS sports complex

Games to move under the lights

While watching his two boys play football, Gunnison High School parent Dale Hoots has taken an unofficial attendance at games, counting as few as 39 people in the stands. There might be as many players and coaches standing on the sidelines. But Hoots and other parents, along with the help of a few district administrators, are trying to breathe life into what seemed to be a dying dream.

“We feel that the kids, the coaches, the school need better support than that,” Hoots said.
The dream Hoots has is to pack local and visiting fans into a Friday night football game under the lights in Gunnison. When he travels to other districts to watch a game, he sometimes wonders, “Why can’t we have that?”
But in Gunnison, the games are held at 1 and 3 p.m. on a Friday, so even the athletes playing at home have to get out of school early; the timing makes it difficult for working people in the community to make a game. Hoots said a straw poll taken around town has backed up what they’ve believed all along: more people would go if the games were an evening event.
With that in mind, a plan just to put lights on Gunnison High School’s football field has turned into an opportunity create a sports complex that the community, and now the school board, is getting behind.
With more than $880,000 left over from the district’s 2009 bond sale and subsequent renovation projects, the school board and district administration weighed different options for the extra cash, ultimately settling on a plan to put it back into the school’s facilities.
And the ball started rolling in Gunnison for a better football and baseball field. With $100,000 for lights on the football field and improvements to the baseball field and $182,000 for bathrooms, a concession booth and other amenities at the fields, it wasn’t long before the community got on board to take the facility further.
At a meeting on Monday, March 7, Hoots told the school board that there have already been a lot of in-kind donations from people, many of them contractors in one trade or another, willing to pitch in to help.
With seed money to get most of the major projects on the field started, the group of parents and administrators, including the principals of GHS, are hoping to get some volunteer help on the construction of a press box and install bleachers to fit 400 fans and to buy a dual-purpose scoreboard on a swivel to serve both fields.
Hoots and others started working with the Gunnison Area Foundation to start raising money. Thompson Creek Metals Company has agreed to donate $5,000 to the project, along with the Elks. Those donations could constitute enough money to cover the cost of the scoreboard, he said.
The initial project will put up four light poles and install the bleachers, the press box and, if possible, build a concession and restroom facility between the two fields.
Superintendent Jon Nelson says he hasn’t looked at how much the improved fields will take to maintain, but the district has budgeted extra money to maintain all of the renovated facilities, not just sports fields, and reduced the cost of watering the turf by tapping into a nearby ditch instead of the municipal water supply.
“I think the watering costs were running us about $15,000 a year and we’re able to cut that way back,” Nelson said.
Dennis Fraser, Gunnison athletic director and assistant high school principal, told the board a supplier has been approached about the lights. They have a company from Kiowa, Colo. in mind for the bleachers and will probably work with a company in Montrose on the scoreboard. Now they’re ready to detail a scope of work and put it out in a Request for Bids. Any contract will have to go through the district’s administration before being approved.
Gunnison High School principal Andy Hanks said he thought starting varsity games at 7 p.m. would “lend itself to the cultural climate, from fans coming out of the volleyball game and moving out to the football game, which is really typical of most places we travel to on Friday nights. We miss opportunities sometimes.”
Fraser added that it’s important to have games when kids from a younger generation can go. “Those kids growing up watching the older kids play and saying ‘I can’t wait to be doing that myself.’ It’s a great atmosphere for the [sports] program.”
The board, after hearing that the district would be tucking in all the legal corners, liked what they heard from Hoots. Board president Anne Hausler looked for some justification in the district’s stated “priorities” and found it.
“One of the four major priorities is called ‘Maintaining prudent fiduciary practices while providing a wide range of academic and activity offerings’ and within that the objectives include maintaining capital assets and facilities and maintaining positive communication and partnerships. Those are two of the areas I’ve heard you address,” she said to Hoots.
He responded, “You almost don’t know what to expect when you first start doing something like this. You know the people around you are all for it but you really don’t know if everybody is. And so far we really have not seen a lot of negativity about the whole project.”
Board member Bill Powell wanted to make sure that the district wouldn’t be held liable for accidents that happen during work on the fields and told Hoots that the group had to make sure that whatever is done “was done right.” Then he added, “And I think we want to educate the whole child. We consider the student activities to be very important. It isn’t just about the academics.”