By Ross Markman
Havre High School wrestlers will soon have a little privacy.
The Havre School Board has agreed to spend $6,000 to install 30 double-tier lockers at Mat Corner, the team's practice facility, by early summer. The money will come from the district's general fund.
"The wrestling part of the facility is beautiful, but the dressing facility is atrocious," said district director of operations Ric Floren, who presented the locker room design to the board last week.
"When you walk right in (to Mat Corner) at times, there's nothing there but nude bodies," Floren told the board. "The high school kids just shoo everybody outside and change."
Wrestling coach Scott Filius agreed the lockers would be beneficial.
"Right now, the kids just change in a big room," he said.
The team has been honing its skills at the former skating rink at Second Street and Second Avenue for the last six years. Before that, the wrestlers were forced to remove the equipment from the school's weight room just to have a place to practice, Floren said.
The building is owned and operated by the Havre Youth AAU wrestling program, which rents the space to the school district for a nominal amount.
"Enough to cover the heating bill," Floren said.
The locker room would be a cooperative effort between Havre Public Schools and the AAU, which Floren said will pay for the moving of some electrical wiring.
The AAU also plans to overhaul Mat Corner's floors, a project Floren, who's on the AAU's board of directors, said should be completed by the end of March.
The school district has until fall to install the three walls of lockers, but Floren said the project could be finished as soon as May.
"We just want to wait to put the lockers in when the floor is perfect," Floren said.
The lockers will be portable so that a future change in Mat Corner's ownership would allow their removal and placement at another site, Floren added.
