The school which hosted the First Night High School Football Game in the nation is seeing some major improvements to its athletic facilities. Work on an $8.9-million dollar renovation of athletic fields, and construction of a new addition, continue to advance at Westville High School. Superintendent Dr. Seth Miller outlined the first phase of those improvements…
[AUDIO: ‘’We’ll have an astroturf football field with a dense concussion pad that makes it a little more resilient and appropriate for football in 2021. For our track, we’re going to be replacing our old cinder track with an all-purpose, all-weather track. (It’s) kind of on-par with what we’ve seen in other school districts – like Salt Fork and Hoopeston. And then for baseball and softball, we’re going to replace those natural turf surfaces with synthetic turf surfaces.’’]
The second phase involves the construction of a new building that will sit where a bus garage was demolished…
[AUDIO: ‘’That new 15-thousand-square-foot addition will house public restrooms, a concession stand, weight room, (and) locker rooms. And additionally it’s going to serve our wrestling program. We really don’t have any facility in the District that is really appropriate for wrestling needs – like ventilation.’’]
(How Westville’s football field now looks.)
Once completed, the building will also house indoor batting cages for baseball and softball which Miller says will allow for work during the off-season.
Superintendent Miller credits others with helping to get Westville High in a position to make such major improvements….
[‘’It’s probably not anything that just happened overnight. One, financially — I think our District’s benefitted because – for a period of years, several school board terms and other superintendents before me, the District has managed their money well. And, so we feel like we’ve got the financial capacity to do some of these improvements.’’]
(This drone view shows work at Westville High School. Photo provided by Westville School District.)
In addition, the pandemic created a situation where early in the 2020-21 School Year it appeared unlikely that many sports would take place. So it was thought it would be a good time for construction with minimal disruption of student activities. And Miller adds historically low interest rates made it an opportune time to refinance debt and invest in capital development.
The football field is expected to be ready for games this fall, and the building addition is expected to be completed by late fall.
