Crookston High School’s Community Projects class, taught by Travis Oliver, recently designed and built another desk for the Crookston Sports Center. The desk has a 2×4 construction frame with a Calico Hickory facade and top. The students had to use different tools in the woods lab to create it. They also designed logos in the V-Carve software and cut them on the CNC Router. After that, they poured different colors of epoxy into each logo. “With every project comes a learning experience and this was no different. In the end, the project came out great and will be a great addition to the Crookston Sports Center,” said Mr. Oliver.
The students who worked on the desk were Casey Weiland, Lucas Perala, Greyson Ecker, Isaiah Donarski, Cody Demarais, Gavyn Hlucny, and Masen Reitmeier.
The project was made possible by donations from the Crookston Pirate Boosters, Hot Stove Hockey (the Pirate Boys Hockey parent fundraising group), Crookston Blue Line Club, University of Minnesota Crookston Golden Eagle Club Hockey, the Crookston Figure Skating Club, and the City of Crookston.
The top of the desk has the logos of the entities that donated to the project. KROX talked with Masen Reitmeier and Casy Weiland about the project.
“The first thing we did was Mr. Oliver kind of showed us how to design it and what the steps are to create and build something like this,” said Weiland. “So we had to go and plan it all out, figure out the measurements, and had to make an estimate to kind of get it all figured out.”
Reitmeier explained some of the things they did. “We took the top onto the CNC cutter and cut out the logos, and then filled that all with epoxy. And we also did that with metal letters on the front.
Weiland said making the logos was difficult. “Some of them were a little difficult, but we all kind of figured it out.” Reitmeier added that putting hockey sticks on the side was fun, “Probably putting on the hockey sticks on the side. That was pretty easy.”
Mr. Oliver said the boys did a nice job of adjusting on the fly and getting the table done. “There were a couple of hiccups here and there, but the kids did pretty well. We battled through a few, doing whatever it took to make it to the end of the project. But yeah, every project’s a challenge,” said Oliver. “You’re working with students who have different skill sets than I do, and you’re trying to teach them a skill set and try to work through, hey, we made a mistake. What are we going to do to fix it? That’s how it goes.“
The kids will move the table to the Crookston Sports Center, where it will be used to take tickets, chuck a puck, pass out information, or for any other use needed at the arena.
