GRUNDY CENTER- Visitors at Spartan Stadium will likely notice a new addition upon their arrival: a sign full of Grundy Center track and field records as well as state appearances in football. A group of high school students, with the help of construction class instructor Kris Seitz, recently completed the project and learned some valuable lessons along the way.
It’s been a challenging year for Seitz as he works to find projects for the class in the post-COVID landscape, but the booster club had lined up the funding for the sign and delivered it so that all they had to do was build the poles to hold it up and bury them in the ground.
“We kind of had a little general knowledge of it just from working in the summer and stuff, but Mr. Seitz really helped us and got it all lined up for us,” said student Dayne Zinkula. “We got ‘er done.”
Seitz said the project exposed his students to some basic principles including calling Iowa OneCall before digging, setting up the posts, getting below the frost line, splitting gaps and talking through the process from front to back and start to finish.
“I talked to the kids about the high wind coming through here, so we wanted to make sure we built the frame. We put the plywood back so that the actual record boards are taking nothing from Mother Nature,” Seitz said. “Right now, in the year of COVID, it’s nice to have these small filler-in projects because pretty much every project I had bailed on me.”
A couple of the students answered that they’re considering working construction down the road, and they’re looking forward to taking on more projects in the class going forward. Seitz has managed to find smaller projects including a shed roof repair on the school property and rebuilding some steps, and he’s always on the hunt for the next one.
“You learn to work together. When something doesn’t go necessarily right, like the first time we dug the holes, they weren’t perfect, we had to go back in and dig some more out. You learn to work through those (situations) where you don’t necessarily get everything 100 percent right the first time around,” said student Chase Appel.
And for Zinkula and Zach Opheim, seeing the sign will be especially sweet soon, as their sprint medley relay record will be added.
