Blue gym leads to rumors within Westside

Many students walk down the athletic hallway and pass the blue gym. But most people do not know how the blue gym came to be or why it is even called the blue gym.

The blue gym was not always called the blue gym. Prior to receiving the “blue gym” tag, the space was commonly known as the girls’ gym, as it was the spot for the female gym classes in the time when boys and girls were separated.

The girls’ gym had a cushiony, gold floor that unfortunately began to flake during a class. In the 1997 bond issue, focused on renovating the high school, the district decided to replace the flooring in the girls’ gym.

With the replacement flooring, in order to cut costs, the district administration decided to go with the cheapest flooring possible, which happened to be the color blue.

With the new gym lead to a new rumor that Westside and Prep were merging schools. Prep merging with Westside was never Principle Dr. Phyllis Uchtmans intention. It was only a rumor started by the student population because they thought that since the floor was blue, and Prep’s colors were blue, that it meant that Westside and Prep were merging.

Today, many years after installing the flooring, students and staff can see some of the issues with the cheap blue flooring. Besides low quality, the floor was never properly installed because the company installing it at the time went out of business.

Although P.E. instructor Sally Shepherd, along with other P.E. instructors, want to replace the flooring. According to Shepherd it won’t happen any time soon. Especially with the gym being right next to the pool; it is hard to find the right type of flooring for the gym.

“Westside can’t put wood floor in because of the humidity of the pool unless they seriously separated the gym from the pool” said Shepherd.

Along with the flooring changes, Shepherd also hopes to one day expand the blue gym as a whole.

“Eventually we would like to expand the blue gym and swimming pool area and make it into a competition gym,” said Shepherd.