Smoky Hill is accepting donations to upgrade the weight training room. The weight room plays an important part in Smoky’s athletics department, with many teams and classes using it throughout the week.

With an initial goal of $75,000 and an overall goal of $150,000, the staff plans to add new paint, install new flooring and swap out equipment like racks, benches, platforms and dumbbells. 

But why an “initial goal”?

“75,000 is a good start,” says Brandon Alconcel, a Physical Education teacher at Smoky, “It’ll at least get us a lot of the function racks and flooring.” 

$75,000 might be used as a way to show students that the money is being used before asking for  $150,000 as to not intimidate students. 

Alconcel voices his opinions on how he feels about the use of money.

When asked how he feels about the use of the money, Alconcel said: “I think this is just part of the process of revamping the entire building. To me, it’s all about school pride when you go to school here and things are nice.”

Megan Welly, a senior volleyball player, said, “[A new weight room] is a good way to have our athletic programs strengthened because it can be a useful tool to work together as a team.” 

But while many students do use the weight room, not all of them believe this is a necessity.

Sophomore Kevin Torres disagrees regarding the importance of a new weight training room.

“There’s some things that I feel should be improved, maybe buying new equipment because they’re really old. Besides that, everything works perfectly fine. I feel like that money should be going to improving the school cafeteria food or our athletic program,” Torres said.

While the money might not be going directly to the athletics department, many team sports do use the weight training room within their practice routine. So far, staff have raised about $12,000 or 16% of the initial $75,000 goal.