New center

May 29—Joplin High School's Kaminsky Gymnasium will get something of a makeover this summer that school officials say will make viewing events at the gym a better experience and benefit students as well.

The Joplin Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the installation of a center-hung scoreboard with video boards on four sides in Kaminsky Gym over the summer.

Matt Harding, assistant superintendent for operations, said installation of the scoreboard will take about two weeks.

The cost for the scoreboard from Nevco will be $48,643.90 and the cost for installation by Multi-Craft Contractors will be $54,694, for a total cost of $103,337. The cost will mostly be paid from advertising revenue of about $85,000 over the next five years.

Joplin High School Athletics Director Matt Hiatt told the school board that people who attend events at the gym have asked why it doesn't have a center-hung scoreboard.

"Kaminsky Gym is one of the biggest arenas at the high school level probably in the state," Hiatt said. "There aren't too many schools our size that can pull off hosting a graduation with 550 or so students in their gym. It is an amazing facility, and we feel like for a couple of reasons we want to put something in that facility that fits the facility better than what we have now."

Hiatt said the current video board on the west wall of the gymnasium doesn't work with the timer system that operates the clocks in the gymnasium.

He said the new center-hung video board would be compatible with the gym's game timers and also run on the same system and software as the big video board at Junge Stadium.

"The ease of operation for the students and people that will be running it and the JETHD students will be there since it's just the same as what they will be doing at Junge," Hiatt said. "Second, this will improve the viewability not only for the players on the court, because right now it's hard to see the scoreboards hanging 40 feet in the air on the ends, as well as for the fans, because I know if you're sitting courtside, it's hard to crane your neck up there and see those things sometimes."

Hiatt said the new video board also will come with a new timing system for games. He said he believes the Missouri State High School Activities Association will mandate a shot clock for high school basketball similar to the college and professional basketball shot clocks.

Along with the center-hung video boards and scoreboard will come better clocks on the basketball backboards and light strips that will light when the clock runs down to zero at the end of each quarter.

Hiatt called it an end-of-period system and that it's designed to make officiating easier at the end of each quarter of a basketball game.

"If you've ever watched a college game or an NBA game where they have the backboard lighting that goes off when the buzzer goes off," Hiatt said. "That's a very important component for our officials to be able to correctly officiate in the period situations, which will happen at least four times in a basketball game."

Hiatt said with an eye toward safety when installing the 900-pound scoreboard, the district called in the designer of Kaminsky Gym to design the roof anchors and rafter supports that will hold the weight of the scoreboard. The district has hired Mako Engineering at a cost of $805.50 to inspect the structural integrity of the supports and the scoreboard once it is installed.