Decatur High sports facilities upgraded

Wilson saw a state-of-the-art gym, a new football stadium and facilities for other activities, including an auditorium, both men's and women's locker rooms, all rising out of the ground on an aging plot of land that hadn't been used for school improvements in many decades.

But it's a long, arduous road from vision to reality. It took nine years for Wilson, who also is the boys basketball coach, to walk into his new gym. And it took three just to get moving toward the goal.

Meeting of the minds

When Wilson walked into the office of new Decatur City Public Schools superintendent Phyllis Edwards in 2003, his expectations weren't high for winning approval for the project he had spent the previous three years putting together.

What he handed Edwards was a plan that would take nearly $70 million to implement. That was cash she knew they wouldn't be able to put together, but that didn't mean the vision was dead.

"I looked at this wonderful design which also included all sorts of things for $69 million. I said we've got to be realistic," Edwards said. "If people had conceived this before I came and nothing had been done, chances are we're not going to be able to get this kind of money. I'm a pragmatist. What could we do? What would the folks in the community allow us to do?"

So they went to work on revising the plan, scaling back in areas where they could reduce costs while attempting to maintain the basic structure of what Wilson thought they needed to have.

It wasn't easy, and Wilson saw quickly that he wouldn't get everything in his original plan, but he was determined not to let perfect be the enemy of what could be a tremendous upgrade for his alma mater.

"I learned so much throughout this process," Wilson said. "Compromise has been one of the biggest things. You had to be willing to give and take. So I couldn't get a 2,500-seat arena, but if I can get 2,000, that's good, too."

Taking it to the people

The project was scaled down to a cost of $26.6 million, which Edwards thought was doable if the voters of Decatur would approve a special-purpose local option sales tax to fund the construction.

Funding for a new football stadium and the gymnasium/auditorium building would be voted on separately in one SPLOST vote and one bond vote, both of which were approved to allow the school system to go forward with its plans.

Getting each piece of funding to go through was essential to the plans they had pieced together, and Edwards said they've been able to fulfill the obligation they had to the voters.

"If one [funding vote] doesn't come through and the other does, we aren't going to have enough money to do everything," Edwards said of their mind-set during the voter-education process. "I'm really proud to say we did every single thing we told voters we were going to do."

Rising from the sod

The old football stadium was knocked down in late 2007, and work began on the new one in December of that year. The work was completed just a few days before the start of the 2008 home schedule in September.

Three months later, ground was broken on the gym/auditorium, and the ribbon cutting last month opened the doors on it, while closing the doors on a project that Wilson and Edwards worked alongside many others to make happen.

It's not very often that a project of this significance goes from concept to completion under the watch of the same athletics director/superintendent combination, and Wilson said that relationship was essential to getting it done.

"I think that was the key to all of this," Wilson said. "I've seen so many colleagues involved in building processes where they weren't on the same page with their upper-level administration. It was almost like we were in lock-step."

Walking in the doors

The administrators and voters likely will all benefit from the new facilities, now viewed prominently alongside McDonough Road in downtown Decatur, but it's the athletes who might see the biggest change.

The football team and spring sports like soccer and lacrosse experienced it with the new artificial turf field last year, and the basketball team opens its home slate Nov. 20 against Atlanta's Tech High School.

For the past 50 years, Decatur basketball teams have played their games and held their practices about a half-mile away in the cramped gym at the Decatur Recreation Center, and now the players have a gym they can call their own.

Senior guard Christopher Hawthorne said that when the players got their initial glimpse at the new gym, which features a circular walkway above the stands, stands on all four sides and a four-sided scoreboard, they were speechless.

"A couple of guys on the basketball team, we got a tour of the gym, and that was the first time we saw it," Hawthorne said. "We walked into the upper level and just looked in awe. We couldn't believe what they had done. We just took it all in, sat there and looked at it. We were just amazed."

Wilson is using that to motivate his team, telling them this is a unique season, and the seniors get only one year on the new floor. It's a big contrast from previous decades, and he doesn't want them to take it for granted.

"That was the thing that I talked about to the team, opening day of practice," Wilson said. "I remember stepping up to those guys saying, ‘You have an opportunity that no one else will ever have, to be the first team to represent this school in this building.' "

And now, it's not just in his mind. He can really see it now. It took nine years, but the vision has become reality.