001Nice to meet you. I'm Dale. Hi. Hello. Hi. I think we're all set. Oh, yes. You got my pleasure. Daniel's here. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. probably. Yeah. Hey there. Gail's been helping us with everything. Oh, nice to meet you. Beautiful. So, it's already I know. Yeah. [Music] Yes. We do have the first I did a little May I tennis? Hi. All right. We're going to start the meeting at 5:00 and by 6:30, actually a few minutes before 6:30, we will be done because the regular work uh of the school board, the monthly meeting will begin right at 6:30 and we're required because we get public notice to start it at 6:30. So, whatever needs to be said here needs to be said within the next hour and 25 minutes. Uh if you want to speak,
002please sign in. Uh so I can keep track of who has and who hasn't spoken. Uh it's possible we get through everybody who wants to speak before uh 6:25. It's also possible we don't. And if we don't, um we're we'll ask you to write your comments, write your thoughts, and share them with the with the school board. will read them. What who we know we're going to ask to speak is the athletic director and then the part of the team that has been working on this project for several years. Uh on the business side, on the construction side, USA is here. Le County Tennis Association, the wrestlers are going to be represented and after that we'll open up to uh other people and take comments or thoughts as time allows. Uh the school district in
003May of last year signed a memorandum of understanding incorporating county tennis association and the foundation to uh move forward on building a wrestling tennis facility behind Olympic School. And that's what we're uh well that was that was the direction a year ago and since then there's been a lot of work done been questions raised and we want the purpose of this meeting is to put everything on the table everybody either thinks it's a good idea bad idea everybody has questions whatever we want to hear it so that the board is fully informed. Um, and that that's why we're here to have the board listen and maybe probably ask some questions, but to listen uh to the work that's been done. And uh so thank you for coming. Um and we'll start with the athletic director.
004You want to stay? Join the family. Join the family. Sure. Well, I'll be uh I'll be brief so uh lots of other people have a chance to get up here and and talk. Um I'm just I think my uh the chance I have up here is just to advocate for for all of our kids. Um I think that's kind of as my role is not only the high school athletic director, but the middle school athletic director. Um just kind of looking out for um all the best interests of again all of our kids. I don't know what decision will will be made and and how things will move forward from here. Um I just hope that in all of those decisions that all kids are put first. Um I uh I can see a ton
005of potential benefits to this project. I I think I've expressed in different conversations that um you know I'm trying to be real excited for for this opportunity for for kids. I think I still have some concerns which I've expressed um at different points. Um but when I think of all kids, I think of not only tennis but CMS and OCP and all the opportunities that multiple groups have a chance to be able to use a facility like this. Um and that's that's my hope is where um that uh as we look forward to to this project and to see where it goes, that's what can kind of happen. Um, and I'm excited to listen to some of the presentations and some of the people talk today to learn a little bit more. But again, I
006I think when I um thinking of of all kids, uh um I think uh I believe I have um a few more concerns than reasons to be excited right now, but I do see a ton of potential in the project. Um and uh I'm excited to see what happens next. Can you share? Um, dangerous question. Uh, Kelsey. Uh, yeah. I think so. So, my root concern I believe um my honest root concerns I do not believe the project was created with kids in mind first. I don't believe the project was created with WF West kids in mind first. Um, and that is from everything I've heard and learned and listened to. Um, that's a concern I have is I haven't I haven't been that that hasn't my mind hasn't been swayed one way or another
007there. Uh, I do believe that as the project shifted into the site that it's proposed, I think kids were thought of and involved and and a part of that. Um, I honestly, and this isn't really my place, I have some real questions about the operational processes of of the building and and um how the district would be able to to work with the um LCTA at this point to to make that a a viable project, not just for a short term, but for eternity, right? I don't want a project that is created with the idea that if it fails that then we can use it for whatever else. If we're going to create a tennis wrestling facility, I want to create it for forever. um that's what I want it for. And so a shortterm
008plan um and a short-term uh project uh I don't think is is something that um I think that's the reason why maybe I'm not as excited as I should be is because as the project is oscillated back from a metal structure to the bubble to whatever else it might be. I think some of those plans are short-term plans and some have a longer lasting effect. Um, I'm more excited about those that that facilitate function and um activity for all kids for a long term. Yeah. Hey, you said all kids. All kids. All kids. Yes. Lot. And I just want to be clear that this whole project all the way along has been Yes. the middle school wrestlers for sure, but it's the LCTA. So Lewis County Tennis Association. So these all kids would be Windlock
009on Alaska any any kids who would be wanting to use it. Correct. I'm assuming so. That's how that's how I understand the project when theou was created with the LCTA. It was it was Lewis County in general that was included. This happens to be district, right? Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? Thank you. Yeah, you bet. Uh I should have said this at the beginning. The memorandum of understanding has a couple of key points. Uh the Shayla school district, every school district in the state of Washington right now has budget problems, including Shahalas. Ours are probably less severe thankfully than some, but still they are significant. And part of theou is crystal clear and the board has been crystal clear. We are not going to spend school district funds build this or to operate. And so
010the burden is on the users and the the stakeholders who are here tonight to show that that can be done that can be built without school district funds and operated without school district funds. The second part that I again should have started the meeting with is that theou says that uh the facility will be open to the high school tennis teams boys and girls centria and shahalas during their seasons in inclement weather which now they don't have those options and that will be for free. So there will be more free opportunity for our boys and girls who play tennis in this community by far than there is today. Those are just some basic ground rules and we're going to hear in a little while from the US and they have a similar arrangement with the
011CAS school district and we have that contract and they also lay out all of the opportunities for students for free during the school day. I'm sure they will talk about later on. Those two basic points. I don't want anyone leaving here thinking at a time the school district's pinched for dollars they're going to spend a bunch of money on the tennis facility because that is not what this is about. So thank you. Uh thank you Tommy. Uh all right Jeremy Corwin is next. Thank you for taking the time to to hear us out. Well, let me tell you a little about about myself. My name is Jeremy. Um, I have a bunch of kids from CRIA and uh we play tennis. Uh, and we've been very involved with tennis for a for a long time.
012Uh but the other factor is I I was bringing to this uh group this steering group the CRIA aspect because it is a regional tennis facility. So I was bringing the CRIA aspect to it to represent CRIA but I'm also representing the business operations side. I've operated a business here in Lewis County for 25 years and uh we do work all throughout the United States. So, I'm familiar with business operations and one of my tasks with this steering group was to determine what's the best course of action for operating this. So, today we're going to have several different presenters. Uh after me is Steve Ward, whom you'll be familiar with has created the uh the Centrellia College campus. Uh pretty magnificent campus over there. Uh then we have from USA and we have Pat Dre
013and Bill Sage from USA Pacific Northwest. Then we're going to have Lewis County Tennis Association present to you. Uh and then we'll have Kirby White uh present the wrestling aspect. So I like to try and let folks know kind of what what my expectation is. You may have other expectations, but my desired outcome, our desired outcome from this meeting is that we give you a history on what has occurred so everybody's up to date on all of this. We give you the building options. Uh but then we would like a commitment from the district to continue the project. In specifically, we would like a commitment on a decision uh a decision on what type of building. We're going to present to you metal versus dome. uh we would like confirmation that the location that has
014been selected is appropriate and then uh we would like some confirmation that you're willing to pursue an agreement with the uh USA Pacific Northwest. So that's our goal with this presentation. We hope to present you enough information that you can make some decisions. So our proposal is a dome or a metal building located on Bishop Road across from uh Orny Smith Elementary School. Uh our other part of the proposal is that it would be operated by USA Pacific Northwest who's very familiar with operating uh these facilities and that there would also be an agreement with Lewis County Tennis Association to cover additional expenses that are not necessarily covered by USPA and as Jay mentioned there would be no cost to the district uh either in operations or in building. So just a brief item talk
015about tennis. Why do we have tennis for youth? Well, it's one of the few sports that people play for the rest of their lives. Many people like me, I didn't play tennis, but I played football. It's football is not something that you can necessarily play all the rest of your life. Uh it was a great experience for me, but my kids, we got involved at an early age playing tennis because we realized it's a lifelong sport. Uh it's a low impact sport. Um and the cost is very minimal. compared to other schools. Currently, we have a lack of access. Uh we only have one indoor court here in Lewis County. So we're not able to have leagues uh USDA leagues which fosters additional uh participation where there's no ability for teams to practice uh when
016there's inclement weather. there's limited instruction and for instance uh my two boys who are uh who qualify for state they have to find other places to practice during the winter time because they they qualify in the fall but then they play in the spring but there's no place for them to practice with enough there's no available space with the current um current situation uh there is a USA league that does come out of our facility but the home court is steamboat So all the players actually go up there uh to play. So four courts would significantly improve access and we would also have the ability to have the wrestlers have their practices. Now at the very beginning we we realized that there were significant benefits with regional tennis center. Uh the number one thing is
017our region has become known as a hub for sports. So we want to foster, we want to continue that regional hub concept which gets the kids involved in an early age too. We want to enhance the appeal of our local area and increase the quality of life. We definitely would have improved access for children to uh play tennis if we had another facility here. and at and my discussions with Centrellia College, they said there's possibility of having uh a tennis team back again. Now, when you have a college team, it actually helps develop the kids at a younger age because then they have some goals of possibly playing for the local public. So, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about our journey. It's been five years. Uh we started in fall of
0182020 and we began searching for a location. Uh, Greg Lung did some initial searching. I did some searching and and hopefully uh uh grab that. Thank you. And uh we looked at lots of different options. Uh the school district industrial bird buildings, yard birds was an option at the time. Uh we actually went out and measured different gyms to see how could we fit these in. So we we did everything we could possibly do to try and find a location. Uh in November 2020, we we got a commitment from the Shayless Foundation to pursue this project. Uh we formed a steering committee which uh you could see some very familiar names there. We had Jenny Collins from the Shayless Foundation and the Shayless Foundation has been very instrumental in helping us along the way. They
019provided a lot of guidance and a lot of support. Uh with Shayla schools, we initially had Ed Rothlin, then it changed to uh uh Warren and then uh Tommy Elder has been a part of it. And then you can see the rest from LCTA. We also had the wrestlers part, but we would actually meet every two weeks or at least monthly. We were continually meeting over the past five years. So uh initially we had a site selected behind the middle school and then we found that an environmental survey had some challenges with it. So the first site you can see there on the upper left uh it was inadequate due to some protected trees. Uh so we came up with the second site uh that you can see there that's right by Olympic um that
020is over an existing field. you want questions as you're going through some of this or you want to wait. Um, why don't we wait and let me answer some of them today? But if there's something glaring, do you want me to go ahead? Um, well, if we go back to your last slide, I guess one of my questions, and I'm only asking this because I want to make sure that I'm doing my due diligence and asking about all of the concerns that have been raised. So, you mentioned that the first site was inadequate due to the trees. Um, I'm wondering about, you know, future usage of at this facility and want something that's lasting. Are we ever going to need the land that this facility is being built on? I guess more specifically what I'm
021asking is, you know, some of the other land that around somewhere other campus, is it usable if we needed it or is it inadequate due to permitting or whatever these problems are trees? I've lived here for 50 years and that land has never been used for anything and nobody has come up with anything for it to be used. There was little football on it for a while, but as far as I know, we've never even capital projects wise never even talked about using that land for anything. So, I I I'm just saying not a big deal, but I don't think we need to just save it in case something comes up, you know. I think it's a really important question. That's one of the questions we have for you. Is it the appropriate place? I
022thought we did we have looked at this pretty extensively. Uh we did talk to the groups that were using this practice field and said is this okay and and they they were totally fine they're moving their practice toward the other end. Does anybody else have a comment on So one of the questions important question but if you look to the west there's a lot of land there and it all thanks to the Shaws belongs to the Shale school district as does the property just obviously to the to the north behind the middle school. So there is a lot of ground there still even after this is built and then of course you have Olympic u so I don't believe that taking this precludes what might be options in the future and I'll just say that
023when the Shaw gave that 42 acres on the west side of Bishop Road their vision was it be a campus and and it be able to be developed over time if the district more needs for for capital projects to build and as you can see there's a lot of available property and and has had much more environmental work done on it than the property that so our journey I don't know we adequately addressed it but I think it's an important question uh I do think know what is the vision of schools, where do you want to put it? I thought we did put a lot of thought into where this would be. Uh we continued looking for sites and we uh continued looking on what type of structures uh we should have. We visited at
024least 10 facilities uh that are listed there from brick, uh steel, fabric, and dome. But we added some architects again to it. And then uh we continued our fundraising and operating structure questions. Who's going to operate it? How's it going to be operated? How's it going? How's it going to work? Uh as Jay mentioned, in May of last year, anou was signed uh that created this agreement to go ahead and continue to pursue it. That's why we're back here again. We're reporting on this. We want to continue to move forward. The idea was no construction costs, no operations costs. We would have wrestling practice and that we would have at least at the minimum support time for inclement weather. Uh so uh the regional tennis facility was our proposal is a fourcourt facility built on
025Shayla's property with one court dedicated to wrestling uh for 10 weeks. And we've had regional support. Uh CRIA Community Foundation has sent in a letter of support. Cria city CRIA has provided support. They realize this is an important feature that can help our community. The projected cost is about $4 million for the dome. Now, I can tell you I personally am for the dome because I I would prefer to spend less money on a facility that is operational that would work. I don't I prefer not to spend a significantly amount more for a facility that uh is not necessarily needed. Uh we can we can uh play tennis in a dome. Uh and the cost is significantly cheaper than a metab building. And there's a lot of great things that come with a dome. Um
026and I'll I'll show you some pictures here shortly. the current funding that we've had, we've had uh over $3 million in pledges and grants and state appropriation. Now, some of those grants specifically said uh the proposed site as the one uh that was near Olympic. Um and then we had some local folks that have supported tennis. There's some additional funding that's available and our current possible then would be about 4.3 million. So, let me show you a couple pictures of what this would look like. Uh, it's a very bright uh, which is what you need for tennis. This is a four court facility uh, with upward lighting and Steve will get into some of the details on some of the costs associated with this. Uh, another example of an indoor dome type facility. And I
027wanted to point out one of the questions that has come up is what if we decide to use this for something else later? What if uh for instance uh you know Tommy and said well what if you know uh what what if we want to use it for something else tennis he didn't mention in tennis failed but what if tennis failed well these facilities are used for lots of different things so I'm just showing a picture here that these facilities are used all over the United States for other sports not just tennis so this is the national sports center in Blaine uh Minnesota here's one in Anchorage Alaska U so the whole idea is to get people out of the elements and it's a very reasonable cost. Uh University of Massachusetts schools uh colleges and
028schools use these quite a bit for practices uh practices. Yeah. In fact there you mentioned there's several that are in our local area. Yes. That that use these. Uh I think a good question is what will this cost if someone was just present if they wanted to use tennis? Is this going to be affordable? Uh so I did some analysis uh this is 2024 uh numbers but you know what would it cost for someone during non-school events. So if it's a school event there would be no cost but uh let's say someone wants to go play tennis what does it cost somebody? What's the cost for somebody that's under 18 to use the facility? Uh if you were a steamboat, the typical cost would be 193 a month. And that is assuming uh that you're
029a member that you do two classes uh of tennis and that you have four additional four times. So I had to put some assumptions in in order to calculate this out. In tongue water or in the valley uh it's about 151. Corbex is 96. And uh according to the US model, this might be a little bit outdated. It's about 78. It's definitely the cheaper option. Uh the membership fee for USDA, you'll see they'll they'll let you know that it's a very minimal cost because the goal is to get people into the door. Uh and uh I should point out that though we have these costs, uh you know, Thorex though it may cost $78 or $96 a month, you also are getting additional things at Forbex. So I don't want to say that you're only
030going to tend to support when you're paying that fee, the monthly membership fee, you're also getting other things inex. So I think the other question is why the local existing tennis court, you know, doesn't increase tennis play. What what's the the the issue? Well, I can tell you I am extremely grateful to Thors. They my kids I have had four kids that have qualified for state and I have all my family members pretty much play tennis. It's been an excellent place for people to learn tennis and to grow. Uh so they've they've had a tremendous impact on on Lewis County. So and they've continued to operate for a long time when things were challenging. Uh but some of the reasons why it has not increased tennis play is because there are some lack of vigorous
031marketing and programs. we only have one court, so you can't necessarily do additional things. Um, there's a lack of a feeder program. Um, and then when we had three courts years ago, it was easier to draw people in, but there some of these programs were not necessarily available. Uh, we don't currently have the USDA leagues. We're not able to have tournaments. And so, when you have a tournament, the kids are more willing to play because they have competition. It's one thing to go out and practice and go to classes, but it's another thing to have some tournaments to go into. So, you're going to hear uh from USA in after Steve chats, but I just just a brief note about USA. They're nonprofit. They have many local they have several local facilities that they operate.
032Uh and they'll talk a little bit about that and they just have a track record of success. I think for Lewis County to have the ability to have a worldclass organization to kind of step in and help us be successful in this, it's a pretty great opportunity. So the next person that's going to present is Steve Ward from uh himself that used to be college. Oh by the way uh we do we will have opportunity after people present of course if you have some urgent questions go ahead and ask them but if you want to uh have questions at the end we're all more than welcome to to respond. It's hard to follow Jiren. He's such a smooth shop. Uh for those of you that aren't familiar, my name is Steve. I am retired, so
033I'm not from anywhere above my house. Uh those of you might know me, so some of my background is I from 1993 to 2021. I was vice president for finance administration, Centroa College. I oversaw over a quarter million square feet of either new building or renovated structures. planning and also uh probably close to $100 million for the project. So I I was happily retired when I got a phone call saying we need help kind of bringing this together. And one reason that I I didn't drive a single nail in those buildings. So don't I did not build those buildings. Okay. I just help coordinate a lot of the stuff that goes on, finances, construction, etc. But uh every one of those buildings there are multiple users to it. So we have a science building over
034there but I have administrative offices, English faculty, you know, etc. teaching over there. The latest building, the transa commons, the student services, but I also have instruction and classrooms, student programs, and a big chunk of that open to the community. So I'm used to working with a broad interest group for singular buildings. So, I've been very successful in blending multiple uses into those buildings, etc. So, when this came up, it seemed like I had to work with the H Shaers Foundation, the city, uh, the school district, the tennis association, etc. I'm I'm very very accustomed to that. I thought I had put that all in the past. It looks like it you can run just like the Hotel California. You can check out anytime you want, but you really never leave. So, uh, Anyway, so
035part of what I was going around was the actual construction piece. And so in that we looked at it and as you saw earlier, we've gone and we've studied 10 structures. We went with a group from the steering committee. We looked at 10 different structures and we u narrowed it down to two. Okay? And the two that we're looking at here, we started with the steel u uh structure, metal structure first and then the person that we brought in to help us with the pricing on that. It was way more than we could possibly ever raise. So we would never have an inboard facility spending all of our time raising money. And then recently and because of that we went into what's called a fabric tension building which is like a large tent. Okay. uh
036which is commonly used all over and there are several in Northwest that we visited and then we went into dome structures okay and we visited those as well and started studying those and then finally while we're still just going down the road of the dome structure we got connected with a person from CNC metal structure who has done steel buildings here in this area in this the city of Shahish's jurisdiction and fairly recently. So, we had great numbers and we we pulled numbers to him and these numbers were um pre these were February numbers. There's been a slight increase in metal but if there's a big tariff increase the metal structure will definitely go up. So, it you know at this point these were February numbers when we're looking at it. So what we did
037is I worked with a gentleman named Aaron Paul who's been a great person to work with uh and as I said very familiar with working with the sh city of Shahos and we went down and we did a sidebyside comparison between the dome and the metal structure. We come down to the very bottom 3.8 to 4.9. Now, both of those numbers include a 10% a 10% contingency on the dome structure, but he was he saying he felt pretty comfortable with his numbers. So, his contingency number that we used was 5%. For the uh steel facility, but still the 5% contingency, we still came to 4.9. So, we are looking at this now and so we're between 3.8 and $4.9 million for this particular project. as far as raw cost goes and I'll hesitate right there
038to see if there's questions. I think you should make clear that's the whole project. That's the whole that's not just the dome but that's the courts. In fact, if you look about there's a number in there called port resurfacing. Okay. Uh that's $200,000. That's a different surface that we put on there. So, if we use a dome structure, one of the things that we're looking at is the um the center of the dome, the center of that surface can actually the asphalt. Okay? Uh and then we put the plain surface over the top of that. Uh that's very common practice and that's a little less expensive. However, with the steel structure, in my conversation with Aaron, that steel the the concrete slab is actually part of the afford the engineered support with the steel column.
039So you can't then go and put asphalt in there and save some money on on the on the concrete. So that's one reason it's a little bit higher. But on the flip side, uh it also it adds to the rigidity and the engineered structure support that they need for that building. And this area here uh where 20 years ago we had uh a certain code for structural uh integrity. We are now on the same pretty much the same fault uh uh line as not the same fault line but the same uh code structure that San Francisco has. So I mean if you were to go to look at the the transa commons over at the college we left a lot of the uh engineered structural support for that displayed so people can see uh that
040and it's it's this the most rigid uh earthquake proof building that we have in Wisconsin because it's the most modern build in that under that category. But the court the court resurfacing that line item is in there because that is a plane surface. It's just like after this was a soccer field which is my little okay because a soccer field they would need the turf okay across all that but we have both in and both numbers but question life expectancy under uh okay so the dome structure they're saying they're warranted for like 20 to 25 years but there are domes that are actually still up that are way past that lot and I was looking at fabention buildings Okay, which is almost identical material on the outside and they're usually 30 years, but they're warrantied
041for 20 20 to 25 years. On this dome structure that we're looking at here, we would probably consider and I'll show you an example of using a tedar covering over top of it to help fight some of the algae and growth that grows on the fabric in the area there. And there there's in this presentation I have here are some examples of what that looks like. maintance cost. Um, one of the feedback that we got to ask about was that something about the dome has to be taken down every year. No, it doesn't have to be. That's not correct. It's not correct. It does not have to be taken down every year. But if you uh you will have to there's a there's a growth that will happen on the outside. If you look at
042membrane growths, it's the same growth you get me. It aesthetically doesn't look good. it doesn't really impact the the fabric that much. But uh if you and there's some there's an example I'm going to show you with some pictures of a new material that they've used uh called Tedar that that I'm looking at this company called Farley, okay, which has been highly recommended of all the domes that we visited. They said you really want to get a Farley dome, okay? And I'll talk a little bit more about Farley later, but at this point we're just looking at a dome, but there's a an exterior cover as you call they put on it and it actually fights that glow and you don't no you do not have to deflate it but if you don't clean it
043it's going to look a little dy and you'll see that in some of the pictures. So there, just to be crystal clear, there's not going to be like a monthly $40,000 cost to take it down and have to No, we visited one one dome site we visited was in Portland and what they did is they covered their outdoor ports, but in the summer they take them down in like May and June and they put them back up in October, November, and they do that because they want outside ports and that's about 40 50,000 labor that they take it down, play outside, and they put it back up. But they also are a public uh sports facility, so they're a part of a park district and their district budget covers. That isn't an option here. Good
044question. You guys should ask Jerry. We might have to call back. All right. All right. So, the other thing was energy consumption. So, when we were going through this, I I've been I I've looked at multiple vendors that create these domes, okay? And they get lots of information. So, I got from Gayon, which is one that is several domes up here in Bur the Northwest, and they got our zip code and they looked at our average winter temperature of which is way colder and everybody in this room that lives here knows 24. We're not going to get to that point but they did these calculations and uh so we're building budgets based on this. This is a cold weather calculation and you can see that the uh uh we have in the the different you
045know categories of systems in there inflation, heating, cooling, lighting. Then we have the units. Okay. And then we have the quantity for the year that they say that they're going to use. And then I work with Travis Warren who has left the district, but uh is very knowledgeable about this. And we use a Lis County PUB cost on the cost per kilowatt hour. And this is for a total electric facility. Okay. Uh we're hoping that there's some sort of backtracking going on with this whole gas versus electric. You guys have been following that up more initiative last year about gas things that all of a sudden got thrown back out. So, we're hoping that we're able to use gas because it's much more economically viable than electric. But this is all electric. So, our costs
046are based on electric right now. So, I broke it down. our total annual cost, their estimate based on these units that they're requiring for um for both inflation and heating and cooling and lighting is $41,000 a year. If we don't put cooling in, okay, uh then it's $39,000. We don't do heating, it's $11,000. And if we don't do heating and cooling, it's $10,000 a year. So these numbers have been calculated and this is based on so you can take these units okay and u we can actually figure out what we're going to take in terms of gas so if we ever get the approval we use gas which is what recommends far recommends using gas. Okay. Uh but bottom line is we're kind of under a mandate from the state right now to use electric
047only. So this is a worst case scenario. So now this is for a dome. If we were to put this into a steel building, I can tell you the cost would be less even with electric. Okay? Uh because the dome of course it has an insulation value but not near the insulation that we're going to get still. So that's the million dollar difference. Yes. If the average winter temperature is 40 degrees, you know how much difference that makes to that? you're asking that's fine. Keep going. So, what are you I mean anticipating doing obviously it's a large difference when you're looking at 41 versus nine. Um, do you have kind of proposal for what you're planning to do with what I would say is your top number is $41,000 then managing that building and whether
048we have 24 degrees out there whether if it's a white building and you have good ventilation and there are other passive ways of cooling buildings as well. uh in the summertime, you know, do you really need it to be, you know, at 50 degrees or 60 degrees or, you know, or can you play at if it's 85 outside, 70 inside? Well, the reason I ask is because um and maybe this will come up when Mr. White comes up, but um my understanding is is that there maybe is some concern with the wrestlers being able to use it and safety if it's cold and their mats and that sort of thing. So, um keeping kids first and all of that and this is facility and enforce them have that. I just want to make sure that
049you know those temperature issues would be addressed so that the residents truly would be able to right and you've been working with this as part of steering committee man you did a study on the mats okay the density of the mats and if you keep the [Music] building okay the mats will work I'll have come back and hopefully I have stated what he and I talked about but I'm I'm I'm pushing a lot of very timing here so my memor is a little question. What's the difference? Uh I couldn't tell you that. I've got that value. Uh the metal was 10,000 a year and uh the approximate we have approximate of what the dome would be about 8,000. And by the way for our proposal had been follow along that we are not going to
050eat the facility most of the USDA guys talk about this too that most of the facilities that are operated are not heated I believe I'll let them talk about that but so the plan was about 10,000 a year for uh heating and about 10,000 a year for insurance there were a lot of questions raised Okay. So, we went through this process and um so I have a I have a number of slides on questions. Okay. And uh so the main ones that that were asked is you know basically why not cover the courts that we have now? What is the internal temperature target in the winter time? Why no locker rooms and won't have prevention. Okay. So those are the questions that we had a lot of and so I have uh answers for that.
051just kind of go through. So, why not cover the the WF West courts? And you know, that's what Canvas is doing. Canvas has existing courts right now and they're covering that. And so, we started to look at this compared to the Canvas budget. And so, one thing is when you look at the the way it's laid out, you can't really get a dome to cover that. Okay? It's not going to they don't make the domes like that. So, it have to be a steel building. And I talked to Aaron Cole over at CNC right after you know about a month ago. And uh he said it's really not a good idea uh for a lot of reasons and we'll go into it. But I did I didn't just sit there and make this up myself.
052I went and I consulted with somebody else to say if you were to do this here what would you run into? And I'll go through those. But the pros on on putting it there and these are these are definite pros. It's adjacent to the high school and a lot of other athletic facilities. So, it kind of makes sense. All the athletic facilities in one area. The courts are already there. Okay. But they would have to be totally redone. I'm just saying, you know, uh that's a different issue. I didn't I didn't figure the code whether that had to be redone or not, but the courts are already there. The land is owned also by C you know by the school district and you have 14 out of the 21 parking spots probably located. So uh
053whether you know and so that those are the kind of the pros. Okay. So when you look at the two courts though this is the difference. So you have a stack configuration of six quarts here and then you have eight quarts that are linear. Okay. the linear shape lends itself to both fabric tension and to do facilities easier than the stacking piece up there. So that is a huge difference. And the other thing is you look out close to 16th Street which is to the west or to the left as you're looking at and then there's the practice field for football that's to the right and those things both can impact as we're covering the sports. So when we look at the costs, the current courts don't have the side clearance that um are necessary
054for USDA standards and our whole project has been started with you. What's what's it take to have a USDA sanction training? So we built all of our assumptions and all of our layouts etc are around the basic minimum US standards and that's been our driving you know focus throughout the entire four years I've been working with the new building would fall under current codes including setbacks so that 16th street becomes a fault okay set it back and Aaron was the first to bring that upon CNC which means that you'll probably lose if you bring that back the stack configuration. If I go backwards here, if you have to have a Oh, the center line. Is there a point on this? Yeah, there's a point if I get this. There it is. So, the center line
055right here and the center line right there, you need 35 ft clearance on there. So, here you would have 3 one 35 foot cable point, high cable point side to side. here you would have to have one here and one here. This would be a huge building, you know, connecting the 235 foot clearances on that and plus you're right next to the street already. So, go back to this uh the required for steel. Remember I was talking earlier how the steel the concrete slab Y it's 5.5. Okay, I will you'll give these slides to the board. Okay. U can you maybe just go on the the last point? Okay, I'll just go right through the whole thing. Uh, those are in there and then you'll have this paperwork. You can look at this also at
056the end of it. If we cover those courts, we're going to lose two courts. So, you're going to be down to four courts for the community. Okay. Uh, and versus having six outdoor courts right now and four courts covered. That's 10 courts. You go from 10 to four. you'd be having six points less than you would that level of Jess. Two things. First of all, these people who live on 16th and Kelly serve. I mean, it's just that they look at and right now they can look through the fence and it's lovely. The other thing is there's a whole lot of people in this town who like playing tennis outside in the summer. you would not have no so if we covered those courts at the last two a month then so I did nothing
057on behalf of the school district we'll knock on the boards and ask what they would think about that because I had a feeling that would have been the result but so uh other questions what's the internal temperature the target is 50 55 degrees which you guys know that if we're going to be a 10 to 15 degree difference in the winter time that would probably be where we were at okay most of the time and that's sufficient for the wrestling program. Why no locker rooms? None of the dome structures we looked at have it. In fact, the uh Portland said they had a waiting list. They didn't have locker rooms and domes and people came to play not to take a shower. That's what they they told us. I had a similar comment from Steve
058O'Hill structure and they built a locker room and it doesn't get used as much as they thought and there was a lot of money to walk. And I'll speak on behalf of that when we remodel the gym at the college. One of the things I was the gym was criticized on was the locker room looked like something out of a prison scene. Okay. So, we remodeled it to have more of a health club look to it and thought that the students would be using the shower. They the athletes weren't using the showers. Okay. The showers just don't get used. Uh and won't the fabric become dingy? This is a good one. Uh we're looking at using a Tedlar cover. So, Early had these two domes put up within 10 miles of each other. Okay. The
059one on the left has a white telar film put on top of it. Okay. The one on the right has a standard uh dome finish to it and they were they the one in the the Tedlar was installed in 2007 and the other one was 2008. And you can see what the difference is in the appearance and um that's what you're getting at. And I think that's what we're saying right now. This is what happens with using that finish. It's not really that bad on the acrylic top. Okay. But you can see a huge difference. And the difference in cost for this project is about 15 to 16,000 which we have a contingency and that's probably what we're going to use it for. Anyway, so I'm done with my part. Any other questions? Thank you.
060Was that fast enough? Thank you so much for your work on the hour. I appreciate it. Great. Well, I've been working with a lot of people. Well, thank you so much for having us. My name is Pat Re. I'm the general manager of infrastructure for the USDA BMW. I'm Bill Sep. senior manager of delivery, partnership and advocacy. Um, and I've worked for USAPNW in this role for now seven years. Um, opening and operating facilities. So, USAPNW was the first section in the country that um got into the management of tennis facilities. So, we were we were the u guinea pigs and it's turned out quite successful. So currently we we manage uh Vancouver Tennis Center which sits on school district property. Uh the city leases it from the school district and we lease it from
061the city. So as much bureaucracy as humanly possible, we jump into that one and that was our first one. Um and that facility all of the public schools in the city of Vancouver get a free tennis court during weather. And then we have four outdoor courts there as well. Um and the local high school in Airport Vancouver uses that as their home facility. So they play their matches there. They practice there every day. Um we have Galorth Tennis Center which is Tacoma which we open these two a day apart. Um and that we just lease from a a private owner. And then our latest was we opened a facility in Valley Tennis Center and we that is a partnership with uh the city of Long. So Okay. So, our our mission is promote and develop
062the growth of tennis through children, adults, families, and every neighborhood. What I will tell you, and I really appreciate the athletic director coming up here, so I have three daughters that all play tennis, they all play sports. One thing that was always really difficult um for them is, as you know, boys tennis in the fall, they get this perfect weather. We never see them. They're rarely in Bford Tennis Center. And then in the spring um they're in every single day because the weather is not good. So I think a couple years ago we had a year um where there was only four dry days and so the girls are you know practicing and a bunch of kids on each court and um so we just felt like that wasn't fair. So that's really what pushed
063kind of the CAS project forward. Um but really our focus my focus has always been kids getting the kids out there and playing. So if you came to Vancouver Tennis Center or Galbert Tennis Center at 4:30 on a Tuesday at Vancouver you would probably see 120 kids out there um red orange green on half courts playing and other half you might see 50 or 60 high school um girls out there and the same thing at Gal Tennis Center. Now we're seeing the same thing. Um, so we we truly believe this tennis tennis transports lives. And I think Jeremy mentioned this a little bit, but I mean tennis is, you know, from age three to age 93. We have all levels um that are playing at our facilities. We have wheelchair tennis that we host at
064the Galbert Tennis Center. We have blind and visually impaired tennis that we host, which is our newest event. And so they play with like a foam ball that has um like a ping ball ping pong ball inside of it with BB's in it. And so they just play by sound. Um we have Special Olympics that play in our facilities. We have a love hermitic autism class. So we make it um accessible to anybody that wants to play. If they can't afford it, we'll scholarship them. We have, you know, tons of scholarship kids and adults at all of our facilities. So, that will never be a barrier to entry. Um, if you can't afford it, we're going to make sure that you get in there have the ability to play. We're It's a great place to
065work. So, um, not only do we run facilities, uh, but we also manage leagues, we manage tournaments. Um, so we are the governing body of Tennessee in the Pacific Northwest. So, we're in Oregon, Washington, Northern Idaho, and Alaska. Um and we are currently, you know, in talks with five or six other um areas to cover courts. We signed an LOI with Spokane, Spokane School District and uh the city of Spokane to cover some of their existing courts to run a similar model that we're doing and purpose. Um so I know we've talked a little bit about community hub, but we'll run tournaments, leagues, social events. You know, our mission is to grow the game. Um, really our focus and has been our focus since day one is new to tennis or coming back to tennis.
066So maybe a former high school player haven't played for 30 years or you know the five, six, seven, eight year olds or just you know getting building the base of tennis in our communities and I think we've done a pretty good job with that. Large homeschool um programs at all of our facilities have been really successful for us. This is just an example of our wheelchair tennis that we have up at Al Galbert Tennis Center, which is pretty cool. And then we're going to add that to all of our sites. Pickle ball of yours. And that was kind of my understanding of Yeah. So the the bad word pickle ball. Don't be sorry. So I will tell you at Vancouver Tennis Center, we have four pickle ball courts outside. um they do get some use.
067And then our newest facility in Long View Min Valley, we took one of the tennis courts and we put two pickle ball courts on, but we do have pivotal. Yes. Um again talking about our community health model, this this kind of gives you a quick snapshot of who we are, who we employ, um what's important to us, our value system, how uh what is the process like for you know our students? Again, on school property students first. Um, you know, I appreciate the fact that you mentioned you offer scholarships um for students. How burdensome is that for them to come in and try to fill out for a scholarship or is there any ability to have some sort of partnership with the district for um you know students that qualify for free lunch and a
068lot of our community and students are in poverty and so I would never want it to be a barrier that they can't have access to something on our property. Yeah. And real quick too, just feedback on that. I would I mean and you know I used to want to throw public out there space and tennis drive that association and able to help the scholarship piece is super important to myself. So we really made it as easy as possible to get those scholarships. Uh we do raise quite a bit of money for those directly. Yeah. And we would commit to if you wanted to give us a list and like here's the scholarship list, we would scholarship every one of those kids. So it would be that easy for us. Um yeah, I love that that
069brought up something maybe we should look at doing at our other sites. Um since we are the governing body, so we have access to so when we opened up Vancouver Tennis Center, we had a community day with James Blake. We hosted the Davis Cup. We posted FedEka when we just opened our Mid Valley facility. We had like a fun day with all the high schools with Jonathan Stark, former number one player in the world. So, we will do fun events like that all the time at our facilities and we'll bring those tennis stars in. So, these are some of our current partnerships um that we have with either local colleges or local schools. I love the maybe opening or having community college having college tennis here. That makes me super happy. Um, you give us
070a print copy we can read, right? Um, and then we have court sponsorship. So, we have like a dedicated team like our shared services team which really differentiates us. So, we have an accounting team, we have a fundraising team, we have a human resources team, we have unbelievable leadership at USA PMW. So really our job is to focus on the tennis facilities which is nice instead of having to worry about you know HR or accounting or any of that stuff. So our job is like let's make sure these are the best tennis facilities around. Um that is the list of tennis tournaments that we ran last year. So I think it's 65 tennis tournaments at both our facilities. So we will basically running uh more than one a week between bank tennis center ga tennis
071center and we will do the same thing uh here we'll run tons of events get people here get pets beds you know grow grow that partnership u really important to us to make sure kids are playing at all levels so we'll host every type of tournament imaginable um and we'll try to get high school districts or anything that the high school I love high school sports so anything that we can get here as far as high school's concerned, we'll go after it. So, it's kind of primarily weekend, right? Yes. Yeah. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday. Really, they're moving into two like one day events just it's easier for parents. It's like starts at 12:00, ends at 5. That's the deal where in the past it's like maybe you play Friday, maybe you play, you know,
072it's just a little harder to schedule. So, we do a lot of tournaments that are just timed. And so, that's been um really popular with our parents. Um, I do think we align missionwise. We're nonprofit 501c3 and that just kind of explains our community hub model. You know, we start with the the high school program. Um, we have, you know, we would like to, you know, do park and wreck stuff around the area. Just everything that we can do be in the schools like in the gyms if there's space in the gyms to do like foam balls, popup nets, and really grow that base and with the hopes of just bringing everybody into our facility. It's been really worked really well with our other two facilities. Um, and it's starting to work well at mid
073valley as well. Um, so here's just some um so currently right now um in the United States the um the industry standard is one indoor tennis court for every 10,000 residents that you have. So, in a area, this area here, 86,000, hopefully that's still correct. Um, yeah, we should have, you know, eight eight indoor courts in this area. And I think we currently have one. So, we're seven shy of kind of where we need to be. This talks a little bit about um our section. So, that lists all the sections that um exist in the US and if you'll see Pacific Northwest. So we are um the top country as far as annual growth is concerned and have been every year for the last five or six years. Um our you know CEO and COO
074are really entrepreneurial and and really are um kind of moving the needle as far as play opportunities in the country. Same thing just you know how many how many people are playing. I think one, you know, thing that we talk about a lot is like demand. Like people that want to play but they just don't have the opportunity to apply. So if you live in an area like this, tennis is so difficult to get started um that I just think people just move into other directions, play other sports. And this talks a little bit again about the latent demand that we have in the United States. So we're really pushing again. We need to get grow the base, get more people playing Okay. So, this um how do we define success? So, retaining and growing
075our membership, which we've done in all of our facilities. So, every year, year-over-year since 2018, we've grown our facility numbers. Um more diverse play opportunities, which we talked about a little bit earlier. Um growing our adult new to tennis and tennis 101. So, we have a sixeek course. Um, we have a handout. You'll start um once per week for six weeks, and by the end of those six weeks, you'll be able to play tennis. It's been a really popular course for us. So, we host four of them per week at Vancouver Tennis Center, four of them per week at Galbert Tennis Center, and they're always full every time. And so, and then out of those um 12 or 14 people per class, you think about eight of them stick. And so we're kind of recycling
076in about 64 new players every six weeks in our facilities. And it's they're generally the most active and aggressive and they want more court time and they need lessons. They want to play more and get on league team. So it's been um it's been a really popular for us. Growing our red, orange, green. Um, so for those of you that are not super tennis enthusiasts, so um, tennis as you're younger, you play with a smaller racket, a bigger ball, a smaller court, smaller net, just makes the ease of use much easier. Um, we had talked about already just making sure it's affordable for everyone and that we operate in a fiscally responsible manner. So here's just some of our products and services that we offer. Um, I think Jeremy talked a little bit about leagues,
077which is one of our lifebloods of our facilities, lessons, camps, special events. We'll have a pro shop in our facilities, free string rackets, so you don't have to go elsewhere. Um, and this gives you kind an idea of the classes that we that we host. So, we have tons of classes and programs um that we host. And this is a monthly schedule that we'll put out. Um and then to the right is um oh yeah some of the events that we host. So we'll get that out as well. So everyone it's really clear like you know what classes can you take when are they offered what does it look like? We have classes that you sign up for the month but we also have dropping classes. Um I said earlier from age 3 to 93
078that's that we cover all of them. We did put in here kind of our perform. And so if you look at this, you know, it's pretty small. I can't even just give us the Yeah, I'll give you the summary. So again, for us, we're hoping um to break even after year three and we understand that. So um so we're obviously committed to and we know that we're going to take a loss for at least the first couple years, but we know that um year three, four, and five, which has happened in our other facilities, the black, it's never going to make a ton of money here. That's not why we're here. We just want to grow the game and offer additional accessibility. And if you get into negotiation with the Shayla school district, how long
079of a lease would you want you ask for? So I would say the average lease that we have is 20 25 years. And the reason that we've done that is because that's generally the life of the dome or the at least the warranty of the dome. Um so that is yeah that's kind of where we're at now. But yeah because we will invest you know all the startup and all that will how many USD facilities in Pacific Northwest ours and I think what's what's nice about our facilities is that we don't necessarily measure them on we have a black or we have red like if we have a facility and accessibility is u accessibility is high. We're getting tons of kids and new people playing right tournaments and events and you know we're relatively close
080to break even. That's a success for us. You know, we're not paying the bills based on each of our facilities. So, um when we do this contract, you mentioned um of course the same situation we've had with our girls tennis team through this spring. There's a lot of rain outs practices and matches. Um in the contract that we sign with you, would they be guaranteed that they have first access for practice or matches, but no questions asked. The court is theirs. Yeah, that's what we have with the Vancouver Tennis Center. The board questions. And another thing I thought we would we would question that the board's asked. Yeah. So, right now, if it rains on March 25th or whatever, uh in the app. Let's say it's a weekday. The Catria girls and Shay's girls have
081one court. If it's open, they can pay to use, right? If Oh, pay. Yeah. There's a charge for it. It's a business. Now, this is built. I'm not talking I'm talking currently. Okay. Okay. Yes. All right. This is built. Now US is operating under the terms of the MR memorandum of understanding assuming that that's what and you just said that would be acceptable. Yeah. What happens same day rains practice can't they can't girls can't play outside they go to this facility. Do they pay? No. No. if they have those. So we what we will do is for the entire season we will block out the courts during their high school practice times and then each day we take the court away. So we we will partner directly with the coaches. So what we do at
082Vancouver Tennis Center, we've got four coaches. We give them till one:00 every day to let us know if they're going to use them or not. Some of them never let us know. I don't know why, but um that's just the way it is. But they'll let us know one o'clock. You can release my court if we don't need it or it's raining if it's obvious. Hey, we'll be in there. We don't charge that. The superintendent just asked the question before it's asked. Yeah. Would the USA be willing to work with the district so that PE class we have three elementary schools, middle school right there. And yes, if the PE teacher wants to spend money, we're not going to charge you. They want to get there. They want to have a week block or a
083two week block for their PE classes where they learn the game and tennis. Will the students have to pay a whole district? No. If you're telling me you could you're going to put like 30 little kids in our facility, well, this is school. Yes, the answer is yes. And we also do some other things too within the schools too. We have programs that we actually work with teachers who try to get equipment to schools uh teach them curriculum to teach so get a wrap in the kids hand early on and help facilitate. Yeah. So they they do not have that opportunity in any of these communities. Yeah. Here today. Yeah. So we will we'll provide brackets. We will provide balls. Yeah. We I love that idea. You can always email me or call me copies.
084Yeah. You guys have copies. Okay. All right. Um, thank you so much. Oh, sorry. Trudy up next. Well, sorry. Too good time. Sorry. Well, we we have 20 minutes. I Mine's only seven minutes long. Okay. Sorry. Okay. So, I'm Trudy Pomeroy. I am part of the LCTA tennis association board. I'm also the chair of the fundraising. So, that's exciting. We've been very busy. Um, so we are the right. Okay. We are the Lewis County Tennis Association. We are also a 501c3 nonprofit. uh charitable organization under the IRS's design and we've been in existence for five years. This is the LCTA board of directors. Um they are well known in our community, local names, some of whom play tennis for WF West, some whose children played for WF West, including one who has a daughter on
085the team now. So, any of my board of directors that are here, can you just raise your hand? Say hi. They're all in the back. Very nice. So, our mission, the LCTA's mission is to encourage and foster participation in tennis as a lifelong sport within Lewis County by providing youth with opportunities for physical and personal development and adults and seniors with an avenue for which they can maintain a healthy, active lifestyle. Um, we represent Lewis County's passionate tennis community. We have 155 subscribers plus many more informal followers on Facebook and Instagram. I think that the LCTA has done a really good job of with the girls tennis. I've noticed this year this spring with the updates and you know really it's been really nice. Um the school board likely received a few letters this past
086week. Yeah. with um from alumni and parents and parents of alumni, current players, some still local and others who are keeping tabs on the project from afar. This project means a lot to a lot of people. Um and everyone is eager to have the USA involved. We're extremely excited at the prospect of working with such a renowned organization. The funds that have been raised for this project will be pivoting from the Shahalis Foundation to the LCTA. And in order to take this on, we will be establishing a firm financial foundation underneath us. procedures will be in place to ensure that best business practices are followed both before a dime gets spent and every time a dime gets spent along the way. We also plan to continue with the project steering committee including Kirby White representing
087the wrestling program and retain steward services payment funds that we have raised. We will follow the Steve follow Steve and the committee's recommendations as to hiring architects, engineers, and contractors. Okay. The operational responsibilities, um, we will handle building insurance and utility bills. The USDA carries liability insurance for tennis participants inside the building. The estimated annual operational cost beyond what the USA will cover is approximately $25,000. And through a generous donation from one of our board members, we already have $125,000 in our account to cover the first five years of operation. The plan for financial safety measures beyond the first five years. The LCTA understands the need to have financial safety measures in place. We are committed to plans for ongoing fundraising. It's also reasonable to believe that with the opening of a new facility, local
088interests in tennis will vastly increase and fundraising potential will then grow as well. our pledge to the school. Um the funds have been raised thus far have been obtained via networking with our local tennis community and tennis alumni from WF West and Cria. It is as important to us as it is school the Shayla school district. We are not asking the school district to commit any of their budget towards the building of the project or the operations of it. Once construction is done, we are planning it all ourselves. Mentioned earlier that we have 155 subscribers. After the USA begins managing the facility and launches their extensive programs for all ages and types of play players, local tennis participation is going to boom. Um, all current fundraising dollars have come from a tennis community that only
089has one indoor court in the entire county. Soon the families, the number of families connected to tennis will grow and that will dramatically increase our ability to raise money to cover expenses far beyond what we already have. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to us. And now, next up is Kirby. I have any any presentation? So, this is what you get. Um, I I get to talk about easy stuff today. I just get to talk about some of the highlights of the wrestling program here in the district um both at the high school and middle school level and I'll give them some certificates uh regarding kind of national trends uh state trends and then what we've seen globally. So, uh, some highlights from the last year. W boys played support at state. They had
090one state champ. Uh, historically boys had a really strong program. The girls had their first team state placing. They also played support at state and, uh, they also had their first individual state champ. Um, and along with that, they were the academic state champs for a 2-way pro wrestling. So, lots of great things happening at the high school. Um at the middle school level uh we had about 70 participants. Um we had a explosion at middle school level and hit numbers. Um part of that is uh they've recently allowed sixth graders to participate at middle school level. Typically or historically has been a sixth or seventh and eighth grade sport only. But with the addition of another grade we increase our numbers. Uh few years ago, the middle school wrestling team practiced in the old
091shop room at the middle school which was and uh that that place was tight. You had wrestling mats that were literally rolled out and the place wasn't big enough so you had the mats rolling up the walls uh to contain them. Since then they've moved over to the uh gym at Olympic. Um it's not a full size gym though, so they are still pretty cramped. Um there's no walking facilities over there at all. Uh the bathroom facilities are very very limited. So all the athletes have to walk over across the street. Um and then they put all their gear down in the quarter in the gym and then they have I would say it's generous to say five math sessions. So if you have wrestling mats come out in thirds. Some ones have smaller sessions,
092but you have a wrestling mat coming out in thirds. They have about four and a half sections of Matt there have available practice. Um so that is with 70 athletes and it's very um I've spoken with the the coaches there at middle school Doc Daniels uh John Ektan my dad was my coach up until last year and Rick Ratovic. Uh it's very funny if you look at any of those one of those coaches any high school program would be lucky to have them but you have uh three Washington Hall of Fame wrestling coaches at our middle school program, which is ridiculous. But, um, right now, they said that they can make do with with the numbers that we have with 70 athletes in that smaller gym. Uh, but I'm looking forward. So, I'm going to
093give you some numbers. Uh, the most recent numbers I could find were up to 2024. So, uh, national participation of girls wrestling in 2022 was at 32,000. In 2024, that number grew to 64,000. So that's over a 100% increase. So it's 100% increase in participation at the national level. Um Washington has the fourth highest uh participation uh number in the entire country for girls or girls. Um we are not fourth state. So we have a very high participation rate for our girls athletes at the high school level. Um, in 2017, the amount of states that had a sanctioned girls uh season was six states. And in 2024, that number is now 45. So, um, wrestling, girls wrestling is said to be the fastest growing high school sport far enough. Um, so you look at our
094numbers at uh the middle school, we had 70 a last year. we had five girls. And so if you look at that participation rate, it's about 7% or 7% of the numbers um of our team was girls. National average is about 20%. So um right now we're maxed out of our number right there. So if we want to grow our girls program without um you know turning boys away or discouraging girls from coming out, we need to grow our space. Um so yeah the facility that we have right now is sufficient but it's not going to be sufficient for um you had a question regarding operating temperature. So I had the same question um because looking back in my career I've wrestled in uh like uninsulated unheated metal buildings at you know 30 degrees outside.
095I wrestled on a football field in middle Spokane in the middle of summer on a wrestling mat. But I know that uh we don't want to open up anyone's liability. So I reached out to one of the largest manufacturer of wrestling mats. Um their operating temperature that they say that their mats are um capable of operating at is 40 to 90° F. So um I don't trust the manufacturer on this one. I don't think I've ever wrestled in a room that was 70° because it's either freezing cold or if you're like us when I was in high school, you'd put a damp cloth on the uh thermostat so that you turn your heater on and crank it at however you get. So, um that's just kind of my my spiel. Uh we are grateful for
096the uh support we've had, grateful for the space. Um however I don't think it's going to be enough going forward to continue supporting our athletes um and growing our uh our sport. How much more space we have those facilities built? So if we are allocated so it's the one tennis court plus the uh like the aprons that are associated is not just the area within alliance. Um if you just like wanted to max out how many mats you could put uh you could put uh you can more than double or max space per yeah per conservatively you could double it but if you just wanted to put amount every single square foot you can more than double it by questions any questions so you don't have any concerns about temperature and concussion repeating that or
097anything like that. Um I am not concerned. Um like I said I raised that concern in one of our steering committee meetings. So I reached out to a manufacturer and they said that their mats made to be used that was their their operating temperature. So are you from your statistics you're looking specifically to try and grow the verbal wrestling at the middle school. Is that right? Um it's not that like I am trying to go. Yeah. I'm just saying if Yeah. If I don't do anything girls increase that that's just what I'm forecasting. Thank you. Thanks for Dennis, we have six minutes left. Okay, I will be much faster than that. Um, my name is Megan Weller. I'm the head coach for tennis for boys and girls. As you can see that you have I
098have a lot of people in the audience that are here with me today. So, along with my players, my fellow coaches. So, I'm not just speaking for myself. Um, I am just going to read off my phone because I'm not the most polished speaker. Um, but I we are very passionate about this project. Obviously, this program, we had like so much hope. Uh, I'm a fellow like Bearcat. Uh, graduated years ago, whatever, and then came back to this area. And when I came back, they were like, "Hey, we're building this facility." And I was like, "Oh, that's awesome." And then, um, I became the coach last year. Um, and I was like, "Oh, this is crazy." And so then now we're having conversation. It feels like in the tennis world having conversation that oh it
099could happen, it might not happen. We're there's a lot of hesitation. And so that was really discouraging to myself and to our team when we're like when's it opening? When's it opening? Everyone's asking when's it opening. So I'm just going to touch base on a couple of our main frustrations in the world of tennis, which is just um rain. So the logistics of our season, um we had of just the 14 matches that we had, those include like rain outs, not rain outs, we played two and that was before spring break. Uh we then therefore with all of those matches had 12 indoor practices, none of which were at Thorbeck's because the court was never available. So that meant that we were always inside the gym here, which is not safe. I mean, it's fine.
100It's fine. We are safe. if we make good choices, but like that's not you. We're not like doing great swings. We're it's we're just making the best of our ability. Um so eight so 12 indoor practices, eight matches all rescheduled. We had one match from a south team. We're the north team in this district and we really try to play the south teams because they're super competitive. They have a lot more access to tennis than we do and um so they're very strong. Um, we tried to play a team and then it rained and then the ca the match we couldn't do it. We couldn't finish the match and we also can't reschedule the match because of um their busy season and now we're basically playing every single day a match because we have three
101weeks left of season and we have to get all of our league matches in. Um anyway, so that was very frustrating. And then we also had another south team travel up just for it to rain, just for our match to be completely rained out. Um, so, uh, that's the frustration of RAIN. Um, I feel like I inherited a very successful program from obviously Jack. Um, we have had major success with even the very limited access that we have in this town of one court, two courts when I was in high school. Um, and I really very much agree or like would like to state that if we if this facility doesn't get built. Um, I'm very concerned that this program is not going to do well and not that our programs have to be successful,
102but we are very successful with the very limited access that we have and the success could just grow along with just get big enough. Um, and if we have conversation about covering the four courts at WFS, um, I have 35 girls on my team and 35 girls divided by four is not awesome. 35 girls divided by six is still not awesome with this the courts that we have, but we make it work because we have six courts and that's amazing. A lot of the people in our league don't have six courts. Um, so we're not we're not sad about that. We love our six courts. Uh but you don't want to lose those by covering like covering it and then only having a total of four courts or whatever. So be amazing to have the
103six courts plus a facility. Um also selfishly I'm an Orange Smith teacher. I teach third grade at Orange Smith and I have gotten the entire Orange Smith staff in my opinion um gung-ho for this facility. So, I know I can speak for my for the people around me that like PE would love in my I would I maybe I'm selfishly speaking, but uh I would love for my kids to experience PE and I know that even just the little camps that Thorbix has done in the summer. Okay, sorry. Oh, oh, just the camps that I've done in the summer, like I get a lot of students that have played tennis and then it kind of dies because there's just not enough access. So, thanks. Thank you.