North Battleford Comprehensive High School has officially opened its brand new gymnasium.
The second gymnasium is located on the south side of the high school and is for use primarily by Grades 7 and 8.
It was added after the decision was made to relocate those grades from local elementary schools to NBCHS in recent years, due to overcrowding.
Members of the Living Sky school board and administration, including board chair Ken Arsenault and Director of Education Randy Fox, were on hand for the grand opening on Wednesday, although the gym has been in use since almost the beginning of the month.
The cost of the project was $4.5 million and came out of school division reserves.
The project started construction in July of 2014 and was located in an existing part of the high school. The construction involved raising the roof of the building to accommodate the new gymnasium.
The features include four badminton courts, two basketball cross-courts, two volleyball cross-courts, and space for one full regulation basketball and one full regulation volleyball court. The latter features will allow the space to be used for provincial tournaments.
As well, the space is available for other gym activities such as gymnastics.
A mezzanine area is located upstairs that could accommodate bleachers for 120-140 people at some point. School board members and administration got a chance to see that mezzanine and the other features when they took a tour of the gymnasium.
The space will enhance what the NBCHS is already doing.
NBCHS principal Bruce Friesen said “it’s going to be huge for us because we can have more phys ed classes going on at one time, we can use the space more efficiently. The extra curricular program that we can run now, we can have two more courts of basketball, two more courts of volleyball if we need to for junior programs. We can just expand what we were already doing and just include that many more students in our program.”
