Ben Lomond High’s sparkling new athletic facility is up and running after girls basketball opener
Ben Lomond's Evone Ochoa, center right, dribbles while Bear River's Ella Goldman, center left, looks to steal the ball during a high school girls basketball game Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020, in Ogden.
Bear River's Kaitlyn McKee, right, dribbles the ball during a high school girls basketball game against Ben Lomond on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020, in Ogden.
Ben Lomond High School's new gymnasium is seen Nov. 23, 2020. Construction on the school's new athletic facility started in March 2019.
The exterior of Ben Lomond High School's athletic center is seen Nov. 23, 2020.
OGDEN — Thursday was probably not the grand opening Ben Lomond High parties envisioned of their new, state-of-the-art athletic facility, with COVID-19 restrictions limiting the attendance to a few dozen fans.
It was an opening nonetheless.
Ben Lomond girls basketball hosted Bear River in the first prep game held at the new facility and Bear River won convincingly, 47-19, in the teams’ season openers.
Like the actual opening of the athletic facility, the basketball season opener was delayed until Thursday stemming from an executive health order issued in early November by Gov. Gary Herbert, which has since expired.
Though the Scots left the floor with after a big loss, the gym’s novelty is quite apparent.
“It’s significantly nicer,” said BL girls basketball coach Chelsye Saulsberry, who graduated from the school in 2004. “And we’ve waited a long time for it. The kids love it.”
The entire state is in severe drought, so it might be awhile before the new facility is tested on whether or not its roof leaks onto the floor behind one of the basketball hoops. That became one of the more common complaints with the old Ben Lomond gym in recent years. Eventually, Ogden School District solicited plans to replace the gym and included it on the failed 2017 bond measure.
The bond, for school construction projects at a handful of elementary schools, passed in 2018 without the BLHS facility on it.
OSD approved a $26 million lease-revenue bond to pay for most of the athletic center, with the remaining costs of the project covered by the capital projects fund.
In March 2019, the school held a groundbreaking ceremony where student body officers turned over dirt with the requisite gold shovels, followed by construction crews supervising district superintendent Rich Nye, who dug some dirt out in an excavator.
“To see something that our school board has done for Ben Lomond that is just beyond pretty much anything in the state, it’s just something special because I know what it’s going to mean to our kids and our community,” BLHS principal Steve Poll said at the time.
Crews got enough done for the school to host football games this fall, but with construction fencing everywhere and a large chunk of the bleachers not filled out.
The whole facility was supposed to open in August of this year, but the wet spring in 2019 turned the ground into mush and crews had to wait to start foundation work.
A 19-day delay ballooned to three months once supply chain issues caused by COVID-19 emerged this year.
The main gym floor wasn’t completed until late last week, but students and teachers have been in the building for weeks now, moving in and simultaneously moving out of the old digs.
The answer(s) to the question about what $30 million-plus looks like: a handful of classrooms, three gymnasiums, locker rooms, coaches offices, conference rooms, a large weight room, exercise equipment all over the place, an exercise room, an indoor track above the gym, a trophy cabinet on the ground floor, a golf and multi-simulator, an obscene amount of storage, an indoor press box, new bleachers for the football stadium and a building that overall doesn’t look like a prison.
It’s not an exhaustive list of the new building’s features, but no expense was spared in the process.
People entering from the north side are greeted in an airy foyer with tall, colorful banners on the east wall.
Everything’s brand new, from the exercise equipment dotting the indoor track, to the indoor batting cage setup, to the spacious athletic training room.
“They’re excited to come here now and say that they play at Ben Lomond, so it’s changed a lot of the mindset, so that’s a plus,” Saulsberry said.
In classic, new-building fashion, some of the sparkling newness was actually a flickering light bank on the north side during Thursday’s game.
The gym itself was relatively dark, though the lights had been at full-power all week. No one’s actually been trained on how to operate all the electrical components in the gym yet (that’s happening Friday). The pregame music came from a large portable speaker.
The building’s test run was indicative of the game itself.
Bear River emptied the bench early and 10 Bears scored points, led by Kate Dahle with 11.
Olivia Taylor, who missed time last year with a broken wrist but came back to average 13.2 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, scored six points for Bear River, all in the first half.
Avery Beadles scored eight points to lead Ben Lomond and Maieah Richey scored six.
The Scots got on the scoreboard for the first time with a basket by Evone Ochoa in the second quarter to make it 17-2.
While the games go on — unless a COVID-19 shutdown happens — demolition of the old gym is expected to be complete by the summer. The area is currently surrounded by construction fencing with a sign that reads “No Parking.”