By Brenda WinterTours of the new Hills-Beaver Creek locker rooms were punctuated with "ooos" and "ahhhs" Saturday as district residents got their first look at the new facilities.Munching on chips and barbeque sandwiches, curious taxpayers explored the new boys’, girls’ and visitors’ locker rooms and coaches offices. One woman said, "I just came to see what we bought." One mom joked, "Look how many curling irons you can plug in here!" A former athlete said, "Wow, I didn’t know it would be this big!"H-BC junior Cassi Tilstra said even though the old girls’ locker room resembles a dungeon, there are aspects of it the girls will miss."Everyone will miss the moo," she said pointing to the word "moo" painted on the inside of the lavatory door. She said she doesn’t know the history behind the word. The girls will miss the one flush toilet and the fact that "it would flush if you held it down for a minute or so." And there are other memories. "The time the power went out when someone turned on a blow dryer and we were down in there in just pitch black," she laughed.Beaver Creek farmer Harold Fick said he thinks the district did a good job of building a nice looking facility inexpensively. "This looks fancy, but they did it for a reasonable price. I think they saved as much as they could." Fick said. He said he used the shower room back when H-BC was just "H" and he’s glad his fifth-grade son, Eric, will get to use better locker rooms. Students in the H-BC woodworking and metal working classes played an important role in the completion of the new locker rooms. Superintendent Dave Deragisch said, "They saved the district thousands of dollars."According to teacher Greg DeWandel, students in the H-BC welding class built the metal brackets on which the lockers and benches were placed. He said "a good three week’s" of class time was dedicated to the project which the students enjoyed, "They jumped right in," DeWandel said, "and worked real hard because they were building it for themselves." Students in Gregg Ebert’s woodworking class installed window trim and benches and will construct desks for the coaches’ offices. DeWandel said some students are in both classes. "We had juniors and seniors working on this. The seniors helped out because they know how to weld and they’d rather be in the shop working with their hands than sitting in the classroom."
