PHS seeks to improve sports facilities

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PRINCETON —The Princeton High School Board is considering three improvement projects for the school’s athletics department.

At Wednesday’s board meeting, Superintendent Kirk Haring said the Buildings and Grounds Committee met recently and agreed the district needs to look at resurfacing the track, building a softball diamond and getting new tennis courts.

In explaining the need to resurface the track, Haring said the track does have some cracks and there has been some patch work done already. Though the tracks aren’t dangerous to the athletes, the cracks will continue to get worse in time, and the track already doesn’t look good in places. The school district has talked about the needed resurfacing project for the last few years, Haring said.

Board member Gary Coates said the district has certainly gotten good use out of the current track. When the new track was put in 11 years ago, the school was told the track had a life expectancy of seven years.

The second proposed project would be to build a softball field, which is also a project discussed for the last couple years, Haring said. The new softball field would be built at the corner of Central and Fifth streets, by the school’s baseball field. PHS softball games are currently played at Zearing Park.

For PHS to have its own softball field would be a tremendous asset to the school’s softball program, Haring said.

The track and softball field projects, if approved by the board, could be done this summer. The board directed Haring to do further cost and details research and to bring the gathered information back to the board for consideration.

Concerning new tennis courts, Haring said this project would be high on his priority list. PHS currently uses the tennis courts in Alexander Park, which are owned and maintained by the Princeton Park District.

Haring said he has met with the Princeton Park District administrators and told them the school would be very interested in entering into an intergovernmental agreement to complete some type of project on the tennis courts.

Haring said he is very open-minded as to where new tennis courts could be located, and how many courts would be installed. Dreaming big, he said he would like to see eight tennis courts. The park board could discuss the tennis courts at its meeting Monday at the Bureau County Metro Center.

In other business at Wednesday’s meeting, the board approved a property tax credit settlement with the Crescent Ridge wind farm, south of Tiskilwa. The agreement gives Crescent Ridge a tax credit of $118,000 over three years. The agreement stems from an objection filed by Crescent Ridge against the property taxes charged the wind farm during 2005 and 2006.

Also in other business at Wednesday’s meeting, the PHS Board recognized Kristin Bolin, Beau Minnick, Mackenzie Schafer, Hailey Schindel, Molly Torchia and Sylvie Tracy as students of the month.

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