Formerly known as The Gathering Place, Greenwood Christian Academy’s new high school campus will be getting significant upgrades to its athletic facilities in the near future.
Daily Journal file photo
This isn’t your father’s Greenwood Christian Academy anymore.
At this point, it ain’t even your older sister’s.
The rapid growth of Johnson County’s youngest high school athletic department was already happening at hypersonic speed, and it appears to be heading to another level thanks to a $1 million contribution from the Ray Skillman Auto Group.
That money is being used to fund the addition of soccer, baseball and softball fields at the new GCA campus, established a year ago at what was formerly known as The Gathering Place. It is also being used to make improvements to the indoor gymnasium space.
Though the donation — the largest in the school’s 24-year history — was made public as an undisclosed amount on Tuesday, the school has had those funds available for several months and several of the projects are already in progress.
“It’s all happened pretty fast,” Greenwood Christian athletic director Devin Gray said. “Moving the high school over to this facility, the old Gathering Place, and that Worthsville Road construction project going through the old campus and taking out the fields there. We had a real need for fields.”
Though the soccer field wasn’t done in time for the Cougars’ boys and girls teams to use this fall — they’re playing their home games at St. Francis Soccer Club on the southside of Indianapolis — the process of establishing one on the far southeast corner of the property has already begun. A groundbreaking ceremony will take place today on the future field, which has been stripped bare and is being prepared for seeding in early October.
Precise on-campus locations for the baseball and softball fields have not been determined, but Gray says that those fields will likely be sodded due to the quick turnaround time between now and the start of those seasons in the spring.
The Cougars’ baseball team played all of its games on the road this past season.
Gray says that each of the new fields will have their own scoreboards; plans for companion structures such as press boxes, outdoor restrooms or concession stands are still being formulated.
“We knew the more urgent thing was getting the fields out there so our teams can play,” Gray said. “Those are all things that are in our plans and in our desires, but it’s going to come down to funding and priorities.”
Inside, much of the work on the gymnasium has already been done, with work starting in there last winter. All three of the existing basketball courts were repainted, with a GCA logo and wider paint strips on the perimeter of the center court that now serves as the main competition floor for basketball and volleyball. Eight 10-row sections of portable bleachers, similar to the ones found inside the fieldhouse at Franklin Community High School, were also purchased, a move that creates seating for more than 800 fans at home games.
That’s more than double the capacity of the Cougars’ original gym on Worthsville Road.
The final touches in the new gym will be a pair of scoreboards and a new scorer’s table, which Gray hopes to have in place in early November before the girls and boys basketball home openers. Once everything is in place indoors, GCA plans to honor Skillman at a gym dedication night.
Curiously missing from the to-do list on the school’s press release was any mention of football — but Gray says that most of these plans were in the works well before the school officially added that sport this summer.
“We’d love to be able to have a home football field,” he said. “The two times that we’ve been at Center Grove Middle School North, it’s worked out pretty well, and so I think that’s been a good temporary arrangement for us — but there’s still nothing like having your own home field, not just for games but to be able to practice, too.”
Though football won’t have that luxury just yet, it is on the long-term wish list. In the meantime, being able to have all of the school’s other teams finally able to play their home games at the school will provide immeasurable benefits that can now be felt for years to come.
“It’ll be nice just to bring some more community back to the campus,” Gray said.
