Students and student-athletes returning to Crookston High School this fall will notice a new gymnasium floor this fall as the gym floor is being sanded and repainted this summer.
Crookston High School Activities Director Nate Lubarski said that there isn’t anything wrong with the gym floor but that it just needed to be refurbished after multiple years of waxing that has built up on it. The last time the floor was redone was back in 2010.
The wax will be stripped down and the floor will be sanded down. The next step is to add a new coat of paint to the lanes on the main gym floor, and the Pirate logo will have color instead of just navy blue paint. “The new floor will be a little lighter, and the lanes on the main gym floor will be a little bit of a darker color, so there will be a little bit of contrast in the floor,” Lubarski explained. “If you’ve been to some of the new gyms, we’re also going to imbed a home plate and four-square quadrants in the corners of the floor for plyometric use and Phys Ed classes. Some dot mats will be permanently added to the floor and some agility ladders on the other end of our auxiliary floor, so we don’t have to pull out ladders all the time.” Lubarski said the school had planned to begin refurbishing the floor soon after the school year ended but had some delays that pushed back the first steps until the end of the Fourth of July week. A picture of the planned layout for the gym floor can be seen below.
The school has contracted FLR Sanders out of Princeton to redo the floor, which started sanding it near the end of the Independence Day week and should finish it by the beginning of this week. “We hired FLR Sanders, and they got on site late last week and started sanding the gym floor down, so it’s about a five-week process. There’s still staining and painting that needs to be done on the floor, so usually, we can get it waxed within a week to ten days. This is more of a five-week project,” Lubarski explains. “We’re certainly hoping that it’s ready for volleyball season, so the goal is to have it done right before August 15 when volleyball gets going.” Once the sanding process is finished, the Sanders crew will bring in crews for staining, painting, waxing, and striping the floor to remove any stains or lines left from the previous years. Lubarski hopes that the new additions to the gym floor will help the students in PE and their sports training. “I think it’s always exciting when something’s new or redone, and the students certainly should notice that. It will be a little brighter, a little different with some contrast in there, and some new things will be there to help us in different areas that are embedded in the floor, whether its for PE class or for footwork and agility things and other things to make our kids better and challenge them. I think the students and everybody that comes and visits the gym. It’ll be something that they can be proud of.”
Pictures of the gym floor’s construction and a layout of the finished floor can be seen below-
