High school gym reopens, middle school gym still closed

The California High School gym floor was closed for resurfacing from June 24 through July 15. It reopened last week for basketball and volleyball practices before MSHSAA's dead week next week.
The California High School gym floor was closed for resurfacing from June 24 through July 15. It reopened last week for basketball and volleyball practices before MSHSAA's dead week next week.

There's something at the high school and middle school that some might take for granted: a quality gymnasium floor.

It's not uncommon for high schools to go through the resurfacing process every year, but it's definitely not thought about to the casual gym-users.

The high school gym closed June 24 and reopened July 15, and the middle school gym closed June 29 and will reopen Aug. 3. While the high school gym was just being resurfaced, the middle school gym getting a little more done to it.

"Every year they go in and redo the top finish," said California Athletic Director Rick Edwards. The middle school gym, they actually stripped it all the way down and repainted lines and stuff on it."

What some might not realize, the gyms are being used 85 percent of the year according to Edwards, with most of the extra 15 percent counting the days it's being resurfaced.

The lady Pintos volleyball season runs in the fall, then girls and boys' basketball follows that up until March. That's almost eight months of everyday usage.

Then on top of that, there's non-school related activities that use both the high school and middle school gyms.

"Summer missions 3MT was at the middle school, California rec leagues, other basketball tournaments, you have adults that come in and just play pick-up games and you have all kinds of practices that come in there," Edwards said.