The gym floor is officially finished! After months of work, our floor is bright, shiny, and… dangerous? Cracks in between wood planks, glue sticking through the cracks, trash stuck under the seal coat, drag marks across the free throw line – does this sound like a brand new gym?

The gym floor looks bright, shiny, and clean, the lines are colorful, and bold letters reading “Coronado” emblazon the bold end lines of the basketball court. The volleyball court is done in a lighter shade of wood, which sets it apart from basketball and makes outs easier to call during games. It’s only up close when the true faults of the floor are revealed, some of which have been detrimental to athletes.

“There’s glue coming through some of the cracks between the wood so when you dive, it cuts your legs and arms. It was super dangerous.” says junior Anna Griffin, a varsity volleyball player, about her experience during the team’s first practice on the new floor. In fact, some of the players were using their nail files to smooth areas of the floor before practice to avoid getting scratched.

Not everybody has had issues with the floor, however. Basketball coach Mr. Thomas said, “We practiced on [the new gym floor] for this first time last night. I really liked it. It feels good; you can definitely tell that there’s some springiness to the floor now. From a playing aspect, it’s definitely brighter in there so just learning different dimensions and things like that will be new, but for the most part I like it.” When asked if he thought the floor was safe to play on Thomas said, “Yeah, I wasn’t going to put my players out there until I knew there had been walkthroughs and I felt safe letting them play on there.”

Mr. Porter, Coronado’s athletic director, denies having heard any complaints about the floor and says that any problems that are found with the floor are included in a “punch list” that Sport Court of the Rockies will come and fix in the next couple of weeks; “Probably by the time we put another seal coat on it, it will be what we want it to be,” Porter says, “as far as the overall, I think that the white is awesome; it makes the logo pop.”

Scott Englert from Pryor Floor Company, an unaffiliated business that has been doing floors in the Pikes Peak region since 1970, gave his opinion on the gym floor: “From what the pictures show, I see no cause for safety concerns.” When asked what repairs would be needed to fix the floor, Englert said, “The floor as a whole has a lot of issues. As I explained during my [walkthrough], after all of the repairs have been done the only way to make it look good is to re-sand and finish the entire floor. If the entire gym is not done there will always be patches and it won’t look very good.”

Randy Resley from Sport Court of the Rockies, the company that redid our floor, claimed, “It’s a great floor; it’s beautiful and it’s much safer than what was there before.” Resley has been in the business for 18 years and was very adamant that Sport Court of the Rockies stands by their products 100% and are arranging to come back and fix the “punch list,” mentioned by Mr. Porter, including fixing splintered boards and buffing and recoating the entire floor. Resley claims the only issue now is finding a time that they are allowed to come back and fix these things, as the gym is in high demand.

Anna Griffin sums it up perfectly, saying, “I want to be able to have a home gym but I also want it to be safe.” Quality should not be sacrificed to finish a job more quickly. Safety should be the highest priority for this new floor; that’s why it was redone in the first place.

It is obvious that the new gym floor is an improvement from the old one, but there were some mistakes overlooked during the construction process that have undermined the quality and safety of the floor. Although not everyone is in agreement about the gym floor, Coronado is fortunate to have the resources to have redone our gym in the first place and once the punch list is fixed, Coronado’s new gym floor will be bright, shiny, and safe.

Now to replace all of the other classroom floors with asbestos in them…