Improvements are on the way at two Graham High School athletic facilities. The Graham ISD board of trustees voted to approve the installation of a new track surface at Newton Field and shade structures at the GHS tennis courts.

The measures were voted on during a regular meeting Wednesday night at Graham Learning Center.

The district will hire Paragon Sports Constructors, whose base bid was $329,259. The board also approved to earmark $50,000 from the contingency fund. Paragon will remove and dispose of existing track surfacing; inspect the existing track base to determine if further repairs are needed; provide and install new PTS 4000 red sandwich system track surface over the entire existing track and field events asphalt or concrete base and apply the appropriate stripping. The work will be scheduled to begin in June 2022.

“We sought proposals and we got proposals from three different vendors,” GISD Superintendent Sonny Cruse said. “Our track surface was installed in 2008. We did a refresh by doing a structural recoat on it in 2017. (Paragon) will go all the way down to the base and inspect the base, put all new rubber on it and go all the way to the top (...) I would suggest that we add $50,000 from contingency. Although, I believe that it’s overall sound, when we do get to the bottom we don’t know what we are going to find. We know there’s going to be some cracks and things in that substructure that need to be repaired. If it’s more substantial than that, then, of course, we’ll bring it back to the board.”

The new track surface will be the third upgrade at Newton Field in three years. In 2019, the district installed new stadium lights. A new scoreboard was installed in August.

For the rest of the story, see the Nov. 13 edition of The Graham Leader.