Gym floors get new shine

As part of some overdue maintenance at A&M-Commerce, a crew spent the majority of the winter break renovating the floors of the Morris Recreation Center (MRC) gymnasium.

In a process that took a little more than three weeks – and roughly $20 thousand – the floors of the MRC basketball courts were stripped down to wood and then resealed, varnished and repainted. In addition to resurfacing, the money also went toward changing the look of the floors, according to Director of the MRC Jorge Juarez.

"We switched up the floor a little bit," Juarez said. "We added a new 3-point line because the previous one was a high school 3-point line. So we added a new one that is a collegiate 3-point line."

While these changes were made for technical reasons, some were made with aesthetics in mind.

"We also added the lion head logo at half-court on both courts," Juarez said. "Those two logos alone were about $5,000 of the cost because of the stencil and paint it took to make it. We decided not to put the blue all the way around the basketball court like we did before. So we decided to make a regular 3-foot perimeter around each basketball court and it just makes it seem bigger."

According to Juarez, this process is part of regular maintenance for most recreational facilities and should have been performed two years ago.

"What we did this past Christmas should have been done every five years," he said. "So with the building opening in 2003, by 2008 the process we did should have been done. Of course, we've been here seven years and this has never been done. But we're not going to have to do this again until 2015."

While the floors will not require this particular process again for another five years, other types of maintenance will be needed between now and 2015, according to Juarez.

"What we do have to do annually is take off the finishing wax," he said. "So every year – probably in December – we'll have to come in and take off the finishing wax and re-apply wax. And that's probably only a five-day process."

Since these renovations fall under the umbrella or regular maintenance, the $20 thousand it cost to have them done was taken from "rainy day fund" designed specifically for this type of maintenance work.

"I have an account under the student service fee that I use for Morris Recreation Center maintenance," Juarez said. "So if I see a need to do a big project, the account is like an emergency rainy day fund. Let's say if we have a need in this department for a huge project to be done, for example, if the pool is closed down and it's going to cost me $15,000 to fix it, I have a pool of money that I use to pay for stuff like that."

Some students, like freshmen history major Dewayne Chandler, have already taken notice of some of the changes.

"I really like the new floors," Chandler said. "I mean I like the new borders on the [basketball] courts, and the big, new [university logos]. It's all really shiny and it's cool."

While some may not have picked up on the specific changes to the floors, other students have still noticed something different about the floors.

"As soon as I came in here, I noticed that it was very shiny," sophomore pre-med major Jessica Smith said. "I didn't notice [the 3-point lines] sadly, but I don't play basketball. I'm more of a track person."