:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/shawmedia/YRULHKBOBQ5VQSE4LNYV3QC2XQ.jpg)
The athletic wing of Creston Community High School features a new look for visitors when school and athletic competitions begin this fall.
Updates have been made in the gymnasium, weight room and athletic hallway.
One of the most noticeable changes is a new decal at center court in the gymnasium.
The gym floor used to feature the old panther head logo at center court, but now features Creston Community School District’s C logo.
The red C with white and black trim sits on top of a gray background designed to look like floorboards.
The new decal also has a solid line running all the way across it, making it a legal center court. The old panther head logo did not have a center line across it, which technically was not a legal center court since basketball officials could not tell where the line was to know if a player had gone over and back.
“Steve (McDermott) has worked hard since he got here on branding, or at least getting it down to a manageable insignia instead of five different panthers and three different C’s,” CCHS Principal Bill Messerole said. “I think when I got here we probably had 30 different panthers.”
The new decal joins the new panther head logo on the wall, along with a large hanging American flag donated by the South Central Iowa Community Foundation and handrails on the gym bleachers as upgrades made over the past several years. The new paint job significantly brightened the gym.
The south wall of the gym also used to house banners sporting each team’s logo from the Hawkeye 10 Conference. Those banners have been removed and will be replaced by one sticker featuring all 11 school logos in the conference.
“It’s brighter with it open instead of hanging banners all across that wall,” Messerole said. “We kept our state champion stuff (on the north wall).”
Athletic hallway
The state wrestling qualifier boards located in the athletic hallway have been removed and are being replaced to match the state qualifier boards for tennis, golf and cross country.
“Our staff has to put those up yet, but they’re completed and updated all the way up to the end of last year,” CCHS Activities Director Jeff Bevins said. “The wrestling boards, we took down and took them to Bobby Wintermute and put the same background and sides on those. Hopefully we have the real big problem of having to add on to them.”
Bevins said every individual sport will have a state qualifier board in the athletic hallway with the exception of track and field, as the school does not have records going far enough back to include all of the state qualifiers in program history.
The school is also looking at adding team record boards for volleyball, football, basketball, baseball and softball, as long as team records can be found.
Weight room
The CCHS weight room is now cleaner thanks to the efforts of several student volunteers, and includes a new paint job by the CCHS custodial staff.
The new paint scheme features a large white gray portion on the bottom, a thin black line and then a white portion on top. Currently, there are no designs on the wall, but one of the new CCSD logos could be placed on the walls.
“When you look in the weight room now, it’s just the lines and paint,” Bevins said. “I think we want to do a little less as far as decals on the wall. It’s a place of business. It looks clean and sharp.”
The CCHS weight room record board also hangs on the wall, marking the top individuals in several weightlifting categories.
Strength and Conditioning coach Casey Tanner organized the cleaning effort, which he said went smoothly.
“We just finished painting the weight room. Before that, it hadn’t been deeply cleaned since it was first made,” Tanner said. “There were seven of us who came in on a Saturday and volunteered their time to scrub the walls and scrub the racks down.”
In other Creston Community High School news:
• Bevins said administration is preparing for the CCHS Parents’ Activity Night, scheduled Thursday, Aug. 17.
“We will have a little change with that this year,” Bevins said. “This is the second year the football team is not scrimmaging on that Thursday night. They’ll be going on Friday, so we won’t have a big session at the end in the auditorium. When we get done with those parent-coaches meetings, then we’re done for the evening. We do encourage all the parents to get here and talk to all the coaches.”