Scott Swanson
An effort to get Sweet Home High School students back into the flow of normal life has resulted in a new weight room for the high school.
It’s a somewhat complicated story, and there were multiple players, but the school was able to take advantage of a High School Academic Support Grant to upgrade its dilapidated, undersized workout room in an effort to get students involved in physical exercise.
Athletic Director Dan Tow said an increased emphasis by football coaches on weight training made school officials realize that there wasn’t really enough equipment in the existing facility to meet the needs.
“We had a lot of kids standing around,” Tow said. “If we could get more racks, more weights in there, we could do a better job of getting kids in shape and productive.”
Weight equipment isn’t cheap – the end result has a price tag of $165,551.24, so Tow and other school officials started looking around for funding options.
Tow said they zeroed in on COVID funding being offered to schools to help get kids back on track, academically.
Kristin Adams, who directs the high school’s career center and efforts to help students graduate and move on, was able to apply for a matching grant, Tow said.
“Kristin is an expert in grants, jumping through those hoops,” he said. Adams and district Business Manager Kevin Strong were able to “tap into some of those grants.”
Adams said the funding they procured was the result of some “out-of-the-box thinking.” The grant was geared toward credit recovery, but administrators decided not to pursue a normal summer school program that would require more effort from fatigued teachers.
During the 2020-21 school year, 20% of students in elective classes at Sweet Home High School failed, she said.
“That’s equivalent to 600 classes.”
In the summer of 2021 the district offered a summer school at Sweet Home Junior High and a Summer Reconnect Program, funded by a similar grant, which gave students the opportunity to take “career exploration classes” such as welding, design, or marine biology.
This year, the district did have some credit-recovery core classes in June, Adams said, but it decided to add a week-long summer physical fitness camp that would put kids in the new weight room.
“At the time, teachers were pretty tired,” Adams said. “We decided we weren’t even going to ask teachers to give up some more of their summer.”
Tow and Adams both said the previous weight room could not accommodate demand from students even for regular physical education classes, let alone high school sports.
“I think my goal was just to provide something the kids could be proud of,” Adams said. “Our No. 1 physical fitness class is weight training. We’ve always been limited on numbers because we didn’t have enough equipment. Coaches had been asking to try to do something with it. When we got the grant. I thought, “Why not? We can expand class offerings to kids, help kids gain elective credits back, help out the athletic department.”
The end result was a weight room featuring 15 squat racks and three full sets of dumbbells – “nice big sets, ranging from 2½ to 100 pounds,” along with a new floor designed for weightlifting, which will increase the safety factor, Tow said.
The new set-up replaces four squat racks, three bench presses, and miscellaneous equipment, described by Head Football Coach Ryan Adams as “a bunch of pieces thrown together to make it work.”
“When we were trying to do a weight program last year, a lot of kids didn’t necessarily want to lift,” he said. “And some wanted to lift at Steelhead (Strength and Fitness) because of the professionalism there, the new stuff.”
The high school facility has existed since 2003, largely without any upgrades, and some components looked student-produced.
Adams, who took over the football program in 2021, said the new weight room layout will accommodate nearly his entire program of 60 players.
“Everything is extremely nice, professional,” he said. “It’s organized, it’s easy to get around in there.
“I’m really excited, because this allows us to get more kids in that small room, to get adequate exercise.”
He said he and Assistant Coach Cy Maughmer plan to continue a morning lifting program after football season, which they established last year, which was open to all students.
“A lot of kids are excited about working out,” Adams said. “It’s created a lot of excitement with non-athletes. During the non-season workouts (last year), a lot of kids who were not athletes showed up in the morning to work out. We had six or seven girls showing up last year. I expect that to increase this year.”