A weighty matter
Mike Sciacca, Independent
It was nearly 27 summers ago when a group of student-athletes, parents
and coaches from Edison High banned together and went to work on building
an outdoor weight room on the school’s campus.
It became known as the football weight room where the toil and sweat
from countless bouts of pushing iron, translated into success on the
playing field as the Edison football program grew into one of the most
successful in Southern California.
It still remains one of the better-known programs in the Southland but
that weight room is gone, its skeleton now a graveyard for a pile of
concrete rubble.
The initial endeavor by that hard-working group in the summer of 1975
has become the groundwork for something greater: in its place will spring
a new, state-of-the-art athletic weight training facility.
Ground breaking for the projected 4,500-square-foot facility will be
January 2003, said Edison athletic director Bruce Belcher.
The estimated cost of the project is around $350,000.
On March 12 the trustees of the Huntington Beach Union High School
District voted to enter into an agreement with Hastings Partners, Inc.,
for architectural services for construction of the facility.
“It should be a really great facility once the project is completed.
This will benefit our students and community tremendously,” Belcher said.
Time made the outdoor lifting facility obsolete, Belcher said. With
today’s fitness conscience youth spending more time in the gym, the new
facility will be available to all students on campus, whether they are
involved in sports or not, and it will offer more amenities, he said.
A 2,000-square foot weight training room has been available on campus.
It is home to free weights and various weight machines as well as a few
bikes. It’s used by members of the student body and a variety of athletic
teams.
“On a typical day you can have 100 student-athletes using this weight
room, and that fills the room to capacity,” Belcher said. “We refurbished
the indoor weight room about five years ago and it is a great facility
but it’s just not big enough.”
The proposed athletic weight training facility will be equipped with
not only free weights, weight machines and bikes, but also air
conditioning, heating, drinking fountains, a security system, sound
system and coaches office.
Belcher said he hopes to use the computer to store personalized
student weight lifting programs.
Much like the 1975 outdoor weight room, funding for the new project
has come through donations from within the Charger community.
“This project has been in the making for quite a few years,” Belcher
said.
The Charger football program will not be able to use the weight room
until the spring of 2003, when the new athletic training facility figures
to open its door.
“This will be an awesome facility for all of our athletic teams,”
coach Dave White said. “I think our students deserve the best and this
weight training facility will provide them with just that.”
* MIKE SCIACCA is the education and sports reporter. He can be reached
at (714) 965-7171 or by e-mail at michael.sciacca@latimes.com.
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