The Crookston High School’s Community Projects class has created another project, for the Crookston Sports Center and some hockey veterans.
Crookston High School students Hunter Knutson, Jaren Bailey, Sam Stewart, Jack Doda, and Jackson Demarais completed an addition to the Crookston Hockey Teams display board tables along the top level of the Crookston Sports Center that has team pictures of previous Crookston hockey teams.
Community Projects class teacher Travis Oliver gave his class a list of various projects to choose to complete to help the community with various hardware projects that are requested to be built or updated. One of those projects was one that Oliver had begun five years ago, with adding display boards to the Sports Arena of the previous teams and elected to have his class complete a few boards to be displayed every year. Due to four of the five students of the team being hockey players and learning that many of those players completed many of the other pictures before them, they believed it was their turn to make a call to history. “Four of us are hockey players, so that put us more in the category to do this project. It was interesting to learn that old hockey players did some of these too, so we followed in their footsteps,” Said Jack Doda. The students added a section containing pictures of the 1950, 1951, 1959, 1960, and 1961 hockey teams and added the section close to the right side of the Sports Center’s Press Box. Doda cut the fiberglass to have it fit over the board and pictures and helped drill holes and paint the board to match the other segments around the center. Sam Stewart and Jaren Bailey assisted with painting and staining the board. Hunter Knutson did most of the sanding and helped collaborate with Doda and Stewart with drilling the holes and staining the wood. Jackson Demarais assisted with the smaller parts of the project as he was working on other projects along with this one.
“We already have a lot of display boards with pictures of previous teams from Crookston, and they wanted to add five more pictures. So, our job was to take the old board here, sand it down to make it look good, add some trim around it, then put the pictures inside,” Said Doda. “We sanded the whole topside here, then repainted it to match the other ones at the Center, then trimmed the sides to have it fit back in properly.” The team was trying to have the display boards look similar to the other boards around the Sports Center while also making it look new and getting rid of some of its age. “We started with a plain board that we took out of here. We had to sand off all of the old stain, cut and attach the trim all around it, then we had to stain the inside and trim, then moved to cut the plexiglass for the top and drill holes for that,” said Knutson. “Once we did that, we placed the pictures inside and connected it all.”
The students agreed that the project came out well and that it fits in well with the other display boards around the Sports Center. They are happy and proud to give back to the community as many other players had done in the past before them. “Noah Kiel, Noah Dragseth, and Gavin Anderson made some of the other ones up here, so it was our turn to make this one,” Said Doda. With the perimeter around the top being nearly complete of past teams from Crookston, Community Projects Teacher Travis Oliver hopes to complete the last two boards in the coming years to complete the perimeter around the top of the Sports Center.
The students said the Class has a few more projects left to complete before the end of the school year, such as a display case for the Leo Club and constructing another front admissions desk for the entrance of the Sports Center, similar to how the class had done for the High School’s.
We will continue to check back with the Community Projects class and its students when they’ve completed their latest projects.
Pictures of the students and the completed display board can be seen below.
