When the St. Mary’s High School boys and girls basketball teams play their home games this winter, they’ll be doing so on a brand new floor at the Tony Conigliaro Gymnasium.
The school’s volleyball teams are using the court this fall, but there will be a formal ceremony at the start of the basketball season. The school will also unveil a new 1,000-point club banner and another banner that will recognize all 17 state championship teams in the different sports.
Among those state champions are coach Kevin Moran’s boys basketball team that won the title in March and coach Jeff Newhall’s girls basketball team that took home the crown in 2011. Since 2005, the school has won a state title every year except one (2007).
Newhall, who is also director of athletics, said the school does an annual maintenance project for the court, but “this year we sanded it all the way down to the wood.”
The project management company (Complete Cleaning) then applied two coats of polyurethane finish to the court before Bright Line Painting painted the basketball and volleyball lines on the court. Three more coats of finish were applied before Mark Arian painted the new Spartans’ center court and Catholic Central League logos. The area inside the three-point line was painted blue. Sixteen workers from three companies participated in the project.
“We pride ourselves on having a championship athletic program and this new floor gives our gym the look of a first-class facility,” said Newhall. “The floor has come out exactly how we had planned and we think it looks great.”
All eight of the school’s basketball teams (middle school, freshman, JV and varsity) will begin using the new court this season. The cheerleading squads use the facility for practices and competitions. Physical education classes are also conducted in the gymnasium.