John’s Journal: The Pride Of Moorhead Is Standing Tall

MOORHEAD -- As students at Moorhead High School return from the holiday break this week, they are walking into a special place. Their old school – at least much of the old school – has been replaced with new facilities, which are opening as kids come back to class.

It has been and continues to be a very creative process. Basically speaking, construction started many months ago on what had been a large parking lot, with a new gymnasium, pool, weight room, training room and locker rooms now complete, along with classroom and other learning areas.

When everything is finished, the old school building will be demolished and replaced with a parking lot.

It’s a marvelous way to mark and celebrate the 150^th year of Moorhead Public Schools.

First-round games in the two-day Moorhead Holiday Tournament for girls and boys basketball teams were held on Dec. 28 in the gym that has stood since 1968. The next day, third-place and championship games were played down a hallway in the Spuds’ brand new gym. The games in the old gym included plenty of memories as past teams, coaches and players were invited and honored. There were many special moments, including a handshake between senior boys basketball player Dylan Zimmerman and Lowell Bolger, a fellow Spud player – and later a coach -- who graduated from Moorhead in 1954 … 70 years ago this spring.

After the final game in the old gym, a heartfelt ceremony was emceed by Larry Knutson, who has been the radio voice of the Spuds since 1979, and after the ceremony the capacity crowd in the old gym was invited to walk down the hall to the new gym. Ball carts were rolled down the hall, people were able to get on the court and shoot baskets and everyone smiled as they looked around.

The next day, fans walked through the new gym’s entrance on carpet that had been put down the day before. Everyone continued to wear big smiles, especially longtime Spuds.

“Moorhead folks are very, very proud of being Spuds and they love their orange and black, as I think every community does,” said Moorhead activities director Dean Haugo. “Through our community meetings, we knew that we probably couldn’t put enough orange and black in this facility.”

The gym and other facilities are being fully used now, but more work remains. Many walls that are currently blank in the gym and the hallways will soon be covered in giant murals, banners and historical displays.

The first points for Moorhead in the new gym were scored by Kyra Swanson in a 65-44 loss to DeLaSalle, the top-ranked girls team in Class 3A. On the boys side, a dunk by the aforementioned Dylan Zimmerman was the first basket by Moorhead in a 90-81 win over Roseville. Other teams that played in the tournament were girls teams from Osseo and Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton and boys teams from Detroit Lakes and DGF.

The gym has bleachers on all four sides (the old gym had walls behind each basket), a walking/running track above the bleachers and the atmosphere is special. After dark, lights are slightly dimmed above the bleachers and shine brightly on the court. A center video board hangs above the court, one of six scoreboards in the gym. A new scorer’s table should be arriving soon, with high-backed office chairs – bearing the familiar Moorhead “M” on the back – already in place.

“It's hard not to like it. It's a beautiful facility,” said Spuds girls basketball coach Tom Dryburgh. “The upgrades, the videoboard, the locker room. I mean, just the overall feel of it is next level.

“Some girls will go on to play college basketball, and they might not play in a facility this nice.”

During the day, natural light shines in the gym and other athletic facilities through large windows, and that theme is seen throughout the new construction. At the center of the new school is a massive, multi-level commons area, which will remind visitors of an airport terminal.

Rebecca Meyer-Larson, a teacher who also directs the Spuds’ nationally recognized speech team, marvels at the walls of interior and exterior windows in her classroom (there are 38,700 square feet of exterior windows in the building).

“Now I can tell when it’s dark outside,” she said. “This is so great.”

The next phase of the project will include building new spaces for theater and other fine arts. The project kicked off after Moorhead voters approved a $110 million bond referendum in 2019.

“Our community has shown us so much support in so many ways, and this is just one other way that they've shown support,” Moorhead boys basketball coach Matt Ellingson said. “Our students have the ability now to go to a school that's going to prepare them for life beyond school, and the facilities that we have on the athletic side are second to none. We're really fortunate.”

Indeed, the Moorhead athletics facilities might be the finest in the state. Many high schools don’t have a competition pool onsite, and high school hockey teams from Moorhead (as well as nearby Concordia College), can walk down a school hallway to Moorhead Sports Center, which includes two ice sheets.

“We really wanted to make sure that when folks from Moorhead walked in the doors, we didn't want to let these people down with what they expected out of us in this process,” said Haugo. “We took it very seriously that we were kind of setting the bar for what's going to serve Moorhead for the next 40, 50, 60 years and we really wanted to get it right.”

--To see more photos from Moorhead, go to the MSHSL Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mshsl.org

--MSHSL senior content creator John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts. Contact John at [email protected]