Bookings for Kāpiti College Indoor Sports Centre are building up but more users are needed to cover its $20,000 annual running costs. Basketball, volleyball, netball, badminton and seniors marching are some of the sports lining up to use the venue.
Annual costs listed by college Principal Tony Kane include $5000 for cleaning, and $6000 insurance.
“I did a calculation of it quite some time ago and said that I thought the gym committee needed to aim for about $20,000.
“That would keep the gym in good nick, clean and maintained and all of that sort of stuff, so then it wouldn’t be a cost on the school,” Mr. Kane said.
Oliver Tong, a member of the gym committee and the Kāpiti College board of trustees, says publicity and word of mouth are key factors helping community sports teams become aware of the benefits of the venue.
He used seniors marching and netball as examples.
One Saturday in August about 500 members from marching teams around the region will take over the sports centre.
Top netballers from the Pulse representative team will use the gym on April 14 to coach year seven and eight students.
As the seasons change different sports teams will be making more regular use of the gym and Mr Tong said basketball had been the most active
Mr. Kane said the old gymnasium did not have the space for sports teams and college teams to play proper games.
“We could not play a proper game of basketball because the damn court was too small, it was ridiculous.”
He said volleyball had enjoyed the extra space.
“We built the gym a lot wider. We have three games going at once which is quite cool and then of course the audience sit up in the seats watching” Mr Kane said.
The principal paid tribute to years of fundraising by past students and parents which have resulted in the $2.5 million community asset.
The suggestions for the new gymnasium originated in 2004 at the Kāpiti College reunion.
Mr Kane said all profits from the reunion, about $20,000, went into the gym, meaning ex-students also had a shared part in the construction of the gymnasium.
From 2006 onwards students’ fundraising activities, in particular work days, were also dedicated to the construction of the gym.
“About $50,000 of it came directly from students and work days, and from the head student team, whose responsibility it was to say ‘yeah this is something we want to see, therefore we want to put money aside for it’.”
But the recession impacted on fundraising.
“Really spectacularly bad timing. Everyone was worried about their jobs, everything just sort of stopped,” Mr Kane said.
So instead of waiting until the recession was over and they had sufficient funds for the completion, the College started building anyway.
Mr Kane said he believed that if the community could see that the construction was taking place they may be more inclined to help out with donations.
That is exactly what happened, and now groups hiring the facility are also helping pay off debt on the building.
Alice Petrie is a Whitireia Community Polytechnic journalism student.
