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By John Stromnes
Missoulian
Friday, June 02, 2006
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PABLO - Coming soon to an arena near you: Salish Kootenai College basketball.
Construction officially started Wednesday on a 2,700-spectator basketball arena, indoor fitness track and events center at Salish Kootenai College that will give the school an opportunity to field a basketball team in Montana's small-college Frontier Conference, possibly as early as 2007-08.
"Can you imagine driving through Pablo on a Friday night and seeing a reader board sign saying Salish Kootenai College playing Carroll College? Can you imagine that in Pablo, Montana?" enthused Salish Kootenai College Foundation Chairman Doug Allard at a groundbreaking ceremony on the campus in Pablo Wednesday afternoon.
But the facility is more than a glorified athletic arena. The center will also be used for health fairs, powwows, continuing education classes, and regional or national conferences.
On Graduation Day, 300 more seats can be added on the gym floor. The center will also contain an elevated jogging track, a few offices and small classrooms, locker rooms and an attached lobby area that can accommodate large group instruction and food service.
It was a bright, sunny afternoon as a drum group played an honor song, and cultural leader Johnny Arlee said a prayer in both English and Salish, waving an eagle feather and burning sage.
At college president Joe McDonald's invitation, almost everybody in the crowd of 50 or so in attendance delivered a ceremonial shovelful of sandy soil into the big pit that has recently been excavated on the south end of the campus, where the facility will be built.
McDonald, founder of the college and its one and only president for nearly 30 years, said the Salish Kootenai College Health and Events Center, or HPEC, as the facility is officially called, has long been a dream of his.
"We had a lot of things to come first before building this," McDonald said.
In fact, this building is the crowning achievement of a campus expansion that started five years ago. The project has included a 4,000-square-foot health and fitness center (which will be connected to the HPEC running track), a new art facility, the Beaverhead Science Building, 14 additional family housing units, and a vehicle maintenance facility to service the college's fleet of trucks, vans and cars.
As always, construction had to wait on funding. In this case, funding came from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Salish Kootenai College Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, from the college itself and through private grants.
Plum Creek Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Plum Creek Timber Co., which operates a lumber mill in Pablo, handed over a $2,000 check Wednesday to kick off the groundbreaking ceremony.
"This is a nice warm day for a building to be used for many years to come, for education of our people, and all people in general," Arlee said, sweeping the sage smoke to the sky with a gesture of the eagle feather in his right hand.
"The wind takes it up to the Spirit in a good way," he said approvingly as the smoke disappeared into the blue sky above. |
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