Donation, dedication bring basketball back
FARMINGTON – Restoration of the Farmington Community Center has left the center’s focal point, its gymnasium, not just functional, but fancy, the director says.
Since a flood caused by a failed roof drain back in September, the community center has been rebuilt piece by piece.
New computers. Fresh new paint. New carpet. A shiny new maple floor.
On Wednesday, the final accouterment, two gleaming adjustable glass backboards, went up.
Recreation Director Steve Shible is proud of the new backboards, which replace antiquated wooden-particle backboards. The boards can be adjusted for players of all ages and abilities with the simple turn of a crank.
Shible is even prouder of the story behind the backboards, which came to fruition thanks to a generous donation and dedication to a vision.
The old backboards that were in place before the September water mishap, Shible explained on Wednesday, were salvageable. However, the decades-old boards led area basketball purists to consider the community center’s court second-rate, he said, and just seemed out of place in the newly-renovated gym.
Brian James, a Farmington parent and youth sports coach, volunteered to raise funds for new backboards.
Just a few hours after James and Shible announced that they were looking to raise money for the backboards, Shible got a call from Richard Bjorn of Kyes Insurance.
It was Bjorn who back in 1986 agreed to match a grant the town received for an outdoor basketball court at Hippach Field. So when Shible picked up the phone and heard Bjorn say he would foot the bill for the backboards, he wasn’t surprised, just grateful.
The bill for the boards came in at $5,550 and installation will cost around $1,800. Bjorn could not be reached for comment.
Although the boards seem expensive, James said they are top-of-the-line and will probably last longer than he will. “I think it looks great. It’s a step up and we’ve modernized things a bit,” he said. “We did our homework.”
On Wednesday, installers Ron Treat and Ralph Brier, owners of Sportech Athletic Equipment and Installation, pieced together the backboards and height adjusters and loaded them onto a 1,600 pound lift, which hoisted the glass into the air so it could be screwed into the wall.
“You stay in good shape,” said Treat as he climbed the ladder again.
The two have been in Farmington since Monday, working to install the backboards, and on Wednesday, they finished the project.
The backboards are a want, not a need, Shible stressed, and are just the icing on the cake of the community center, which since the flooding, has been upgraded into a modern facility the town can truly be proud of.
“It’s a lot more attractive in there now,” he said of the gym, which was filled with teens shooting hoops Wednesday afternoon.
Nevertheless, work in the gym isn’t entirely finished. When the gym floor was put in, the lines marking the boundaries of the different courts, like volleyball or shuffleboard, were miscalculated and now are a few inches off regulation.
That will cost about $3,000 to fix, Shible said, and be done when the gym floor is refinished, an annual event, in May.
But because the lines have to be redrawn, the center will be closed for two weeks, instead of the usual one.
sdepoy@sunjournal.com
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