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1974 is the fall I was coaching freshman football with Ron Long and father Gold and I walked into this dark and small locker room. The smell is the same 50 years later. If you look at our campus inside and out we've remodeled every square inch of it except the locker room area. The dungeon is what it's known as it has been for years. Our locker rooms haven't been touched for over 20 plus years. It hasn't changed the same hooks the same spot same tape on the hooks. Everything's the same. Being able to use the same lockers as my dad is kind of neat in a way. but it's crazy to think that we haven't had anything changed. For football guys there nowhere to hang your pad so you end up trying to get ready and your pads would end up on the floor or the bench is missing so you don't have anywhere to sit. It's crammed there's a lot of people in there all time, it's easy to lose stuff. I think there is an imbalance between girls facilities and boys facilities. The girls locker room is a much smaller space than the boys and I think that this expansion will help with that to have some equity between or boys and our girls programs. I can honestly say that our girls don't use it very much. That they live out of their gym bags.  We don't have an antiquate place for our visitors to change. They're changing in the same place that are teams are and then we try to put them off in a classroom. Sometimes the visitors would rather just put a piece of paper over the window and change there. All of the other high schools in Spokane have remarkable facilities. Our girls tend to spend a lot more time in the locker room  when we are on the road. Because it's a lot nicer environment. This school was built as an all boys school. From my standpoint as a girls coach what has been done for the girls has been pieced together. It's a place where you get in and get out because there's other places that are nicer here on campus I also think that they're not adequate for our student-athletes and for our entire student population That was a locker room built for 1954. We really need to catch up with the 21st century we have a chance here to really finally do this right and make sure it's fit for the boys and the girls at Gonzaga Prep in a way that will be beautiful and spectacular and effective. We are going to move all the locker rooms to below the second Gym below are alumni gym which gives us a chance to have brand new space that's really going to be made for our kids in athletics and PE between those spaces will have a great training area and the needs for a training have really changed since 1974 when I first started here kids are much more into health, wellness Etc and we have a full-time athletic trainer here now who also teaches anatomy and physiology so there's a real consciousness of those kinds of things. So we'll have great training room spaces for our kids now. The training would make them stronger and better athletes. The rehabilitation would make them healthier and learn how to take care of their bodies and the locker room would give them great morale and boost their morale if you invest in that you're investing in the kids. We also have a chance to do some things really special our theater is very very important here at Gonzaga Prep. Weather it's choir concerts or band concerts or the plays we've had a great history of Fine Arts here. If you have a choir concert going on in the theater you can't have a basketball practice. As we are now our gym and our theatre butt up against each other basically our current stage system is the old stage that used to be in the gym. It causes difficult scheduling issues. Because literally if you bounce just one ball you can hear it. You have a lot of kids who because of how things have to be scheduled are not getting home until 9/10 at night and then they have to take AP classes and they have to prepair College resumes and an essays and I don't know how they do it to be honest. What we're going to do is put a corradoor in the main gym between the theater and the gym to soundproof the theater that's going to be a huge change for our Fine Arts students if you look at the the gym itself we need to re-roof the gym roof hasn't had one for about 25 years. The next thing is we will increase the size of the gym which will improve seating on game night but really on a practical day-to-day basis it's going to provide more practice spaces. All our students have access to these spaces before school after school and through our physical education department. Then obviously these spaces get used for a lot of different things around the community. We support a lot of the parochial school programs and so there's a lot of people who use this outside of just our students. For me what I'm trying to do is affect those kids who aren't in sports and to have a facility for them to begin to experience some of the benefits of exercise and have an arena they're comfortable with within a place they go to school everyday to have a facility where we have potentially treadmills in here and so that it's not coming in and trying to share one or two pieces of equipment but it actually serves the students in a better Manner and be able to walk through the halls and be proud of our school. we have a nice weight room now but we're going to have a great weight room when we make this remodel. It's going to lookout over the football field and the track. It's going to also have a nice fitness area too where there be aerobics and those kinds of things. So, that'll be a wonderful space. We have a really strong need for great training facilities and so this will change that and make that better. We're going to also re-turf the football field. It's already 12 years old. It's time to replace the the turf on the football field. After practice this carpet turns green from the turf that's on our shoes and our pants it comes off, it's very thin. It needs to be replaced I would hate to see us have to move a home game because our own field doesn't allow us to play here. The money is going directly... If you looked at our facility, it's going directly to our kids. and that's why we're asking for it. I say thank you for considering it but it's needed and every little bit will help. I want to thank everybody for their support in this campaign but also thank everybody for their support along the way over the years witch has made Gonzaga Prep the great place that it is. This is a Gonzaga Prep project. So, what that means is every single person jumps in and helps. This campaign is important and your ability to give really is going to set up for future generations You got an opportunity here to put your name on a Locker if you want. Name a part of this great facility. Maybe you want your name on one of the gyms. Maybe you want your name on the Hall of Honors that we're going to have here but somehow get involved if everybody helps on this if all of us who have gone through those locker rooms, do something that place will change. Join all of us in the Gonzaga Prep community who have already committed to nearly three million dollars in support of the athletic facilities campaign. We can start in March and finish the complete renovation in November but only with your support thank you for all that you do for Gonzaga Prep.

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