After 20-plus years, the Mike Marine Center at Alumni Field is getting a new look.
The Wilmington High School football team is outgrowing the locker-room space and WHS head coach Scott Killen has done something about it.
“We’re just crunched in here,” said Killen. “It needs to be updated.”
So Killen along with several WHS players and coaches have been working tirelessly to get the renovation completed as soon as possible. Thanks to Wical Roofing and Remodeling who stepped up late to put the walls in, the Mike Marine Center should be ready to go for the start of camp on Monday.
“This is something (assistant coach and long-time friend) Josh Wulff and I talked about,” Killen said. “We made a list when we first came here of all the things we wanted to do. As you fund-raise, you knock things off the list.”
The weight room area is being divided into part lockers and part team meeting space. The meeting space will have a projection TV so players and coaches can watch game video of upcoming opponents or past Hurricane games.
The current coaches meeting room will be walled off into two spaces — one for coaches and the other for athletic trainer Kelli Veidt.
Killen said there are 46 cage-type lockers for the football team in place. Over the course of the next four years, those cages will be eliminated and 80 modern stalls will take their place.
“When it’s done, the lockers will be walled off,” said Killen. “It’s a slow process. We’ve had some delays; it’s been pushed back. It’s coming. It’s been quite the process.
“J.D. McIntosh and I have been living here for the most part.”
While working at home, McIntosh came up with the design for the locker stalls.
“We did all this for a couple of reasons,” said Killen. “One, an improvement for the kids. And two, as dedication to Mike Marine. We want the Mike Marine Center not to be just something the kids walk past and see the words on the wall. Why is it the Mike Marine Center.”
Mike Marine was a 1984 graduate of Wilmington High School. He was an All-South Central Ohio League athlete who participated in cross country, basketball and track and field. He was killed in an automobile crash in the late 1980s.
Prior to being an athletic facility, the cinder block structure was an industrial arts building for the old Wilmington High School that was located on the hill beyond where the scoreboard is now located. It became the Mike Marine Center in the 1990s.
When complete, there will be rooms for football officials, athletic equipment and eighth grade football team lockers. Visiting football teams and seventh grade lockers will be located elsewhere.
Killen said other athletic teams that use Alumni Field — soccer, track and field, and lacrosse — will be able to use the facility as well.
“It’s just a matter of fund-raising, getting the money to do it,” he said. “The kids fund-raised for this. Our goal when this is done is to re-dedicate this facility. Bill Marine and his family have given their blessing to do this.”
