The Crookston High School Tennis Courts received yet another upgrade this past weekend. While the teams were playing on the road, Art Teacher Gary Stegman spent the day painting the School’s Pirate logo at the entrance of the courts.
The tennis courts were re-surfaced and re-painted over the summer, and with the latest addition of the painted logo, they are looking better than they ever have before.
Stegman talked about how the project came to be. “So, our tennis teams have gone to lots of different facilities that do something similar,” said Stegman. “Alexandria and Bemidji paint stuff on their actual court as well, so our Activities Director Greg Garmen asked if that was something I could do. He asked the contact person who re-finished our courts, and he pointed us in the right direction with what material and paint to use. We went through the process, and now we got the Pirate logo out there.”
After seeing other facilities with school logos on their courts, Garmen wanted to add the Pirate logo to the newly done courts and knew that Stegman was the right guy for the job. “After we got the courts done, I asked the guy who did them what we would need to do to paint a Pirate head on it,” said Garmen. “He told me what we needed to do, and I went right to Gary Stegman, who has done a lot of work around Crookston and for the High School, and he said he’d do it. So we had the idea, and he ran with it, and I like it cause when you step onto the courts, you step right on the Pirate head, so people will know where they are when they come to play Crookston.”
Stegman has been in Crookston since 1992 and started as a Art Teacher at the High School in 1993. Before that, he taught in Mankato. He has done many different projects throughout the community and for the School District.
Stegman spoke more about the specific process of his most recent job. “It actually went pretty quick,” said Stegman. “I made the Pirate logo years ago, pulled it out of the cabinet, and did the math on the court. By the time I did all of that and finished painting it, the project in total was about seven hours long.”
Stegman also mentioned you have to paint on the court at a specific temperature, which is why he took advantage of the tennis teams playing on the road Saturday to get the job done.
For now, Stegman doesn’t have any projects he’s planning on tackling anytime soon, but he mentioned that could change quickly, and he’s always ready for his next piece of work.
