Despite delays, Leetonia football stadium work presses

By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LEETONIA -- Contractors are racing the clock and fighting the weather to complete the Leetonia football stadium, but Superintendent Tom Inchak said playing on the new home turf this fall is still possible.
"May was a very wet month, and any time there is rain, you lose a couple of days of construction," Inchak said.
Inchak said workers are digging trenches for electric, water and sewer lines to the football stadium and will soon begin pouring the foundation for bleachers.
Excavating the softball and baseball fields continues, and more work will be done on those fields in late summer to prepare for the spring seasons, he said.
This season, the baseball and softball teams played all their games away. The softball and baseball fields were near the Orchard Hill building, which was demolished to make way for the new school.
Inchak said if the football stadium is not ready in time for the fall season, the district can make arrangements with opponents to adjust the schedule and play home games away.
"We also have a very generous, very neighborly invitation from Columbiana to play on their field," he said.
"There is a rivalry, but it is a friendly, healthy, competitive rivalry."
Locker replacement
With the first year in the new building nearly completed, Inchak said the district will spend $17,000 from the permanent improvement levy to replace middle school lockers that are too small. School officials recognized the problem after the lockers were installed but decided not to replace the lockers during the school year.
Inchak said neither the current nor previous board picked out the lockers, which are only 6 inches wide.
"A yardstick fits in them nicely," he said. "They're too small for bookbags and winter coats, which the students carried with them or stacked in the halls."
The new lockers will be 12 inches wide, with a top and bottom row of lockers. With many experts involved in the state-funded project, there was an error in judgment somewhere along the way, he said.
Inchak said overall, the school year went well in the new building, a $17 million complex that houses all of the district's nearly 900 pupils.
"Everyone was in new surroundings, and there were a lot of changes and a lot of new responsibilities," he said. "Everyone stepped up to get the job done."
Leetonia voters in 1998 approved school officials' request to borrow $1.6 million and pay the loan back through the sale of bonds. The Ohio School Facilities Commission approved $15 million for the project from its state building assistance fund.
tullis@vindy.com