This summer, several athletics facilities within the Port Washington school district have seen major improvements.
One of the projects centered around the track. Long in need of repairs due to its heavy use across all three high school athletic seasons—cross country in the fall and track and field in the winter and spring, the track was completely resurfaced and relined.
The second large-scale renovation revamped the tennis courts, filling in the cracks on the playing surface.
“[The tennis court renovation] was made in anticipation of having the courts completely ripped up and redone as a capital project next summer, so this was a temporary repair that will help the courts last for the upcoming school year,” said Nick Schratwieser, the Director of Health, Physical Education and Athletics in the district.
As compared to the track restoration, which had been planned for several years, the tennis courts fix came together more quickly.
“The tennis courts [project] was something that kind of developed over the course of the last two years. As the school district plans for future projects, the district understood that in order to be able to play on the courts in the current state that they are prior to a complete redo of the courts, they needed to be professionally, temporarily fixed,” said Schratwieser.
Aside from the facility upgrades at the track and tennis courts, new wrestling mats were installed in the Carrie Palmer Weber Middle School fitness room and Rogue Fitness jump boxes were purchased for the Paul D. Schreiber High School weight room.
In addition to these external improvements, the Lead ‘Em Up program, with its Green Team framework focused on boosting leadership skills and character performance in a team-specific environment, will continue to be implemented at Schreiber over the next year.
“We’ve seen a ton of success at the individual level with really strong leaders stepping up and doing great things for themselves and for their teams. But overall, at the team level, [teams have] really bought into the program and adopted it and made it part of their culture day in and day out of the season,” said Schratwieser. “We’re excited to continue to work with the program and have our coaches utilize the lessons and language that is ingrained in the Lead ‘Em Up program. It’s something that I very strongly believe in, [and] I know there’s a lot of people here that believe in it, both at the coach level and at the student athlete level.”
The start of the fall athletics season at Schreiber is just around the corner. Football begins on Monday, Aug. 21. Tryouts for cheerleading, cross country, field hockey, girls tennis, soccer, girls swimming and diving, volleyball and the Portettes dance team begin the following week on Monday, Aug. 28
The start date for all Weber sports is Sept. 5.
“I’m really just excited about seeing all the student athletes back out on campus. It feels like the school year just ended but, you know, it’s been a while since we’ve seen our fall teams,” said Schratwieser. “I love the fall season because it’s the start of a new year, and I think the teams that we have on campus, we expect to do really well, building on the success that we’ve had in previous seasons.”
