During the winter, CHS was plagued with the same boring announcement every day, “The center will be closed this afternoon due to winter-sports training.”

Even the people who didn’t use the courts were relieved when the announcement finally stopped.

The repeated message did bring up a few questions. After all, why shouldn’t students be allowed into the center? For Bob Bone, the athletic director at CHS, the issue was numbers.

“Basically it comes down to the number of teams we have using the center courts,” Bone said. “We had some additional teams with our no-cut policy, and there was just mass confusion down there with people everywhere. To get the season started, we closed the center after school for a couple of weeks.”

The policy has been in effect for three years. Bone says it helps winter sports teams shape up.

“It seemed to help a lot because our teams were able to get a little bit organized,” Bone said. “As you can imagine, the first few days of any season are hectic with getting stuff turned in, figuring out who’s going where.”

Bone says the policy is not likely to change any time soon. Clayton has a special relationship with its community center -it’s attached to it. Most schools have their own facilities, but this arrangement means Clayton students have to share their courts and track with the public.

One team that was forced to do this over the winter was the Winter Running Club. The extended winter kept them off the track. The runners didn’t run into any problems using the facility.

“We took our turn just like everyone else,” Coach Kurtis Werner said. “We put our thirty minutes on the bikes and got off. We went and found other things to do.”

Werner eventually ran into some difficulties in sharing the center.

“You have these old, grandmotherly figures, walking, 70 plus years old, and you have teenagers flying by them, doing a work out that they [the grandmotherly figures] don’t quite understand,” Werner said.

The club never received any formal complaints, although they did get several frowns and head-shakes. Werner said using the center was easy for the club to do. Beyond the size of the small track, there were never any difficulties.

The biggest concern with the center-use policy is the students who use the center after school each day. Junior Lauren Hill is such a student. After school, she enjoys using the center to work out. She says she never has any trouble using the center.

“I’ve never had any difficulty with it [getting into the center],” Hill said. “Sometimes it can be troublesome when I forget my card.”

Hill uses the center all year round, including during the winter. She gets in with her student ID.

Considering all the challenges of sharing a public center, CHS has done a great job of managing when the students can work there.

“I think any time you have a joint-use facility like we have it can be challenging,” Bone said. “It’s work, but it helps immensely in those first few practices.”