Lackawanna Trail recently broke ground on a new wellness center for the school.
Ben Fred | For Abington Journal
FACTORYVILLE — Lackawanna Trail staff and faculty members, as well as former state Rep. Karen Boback, broke ground on Monday, July 31, for the soon-to-be-built PS Bank Recreation and Wellness Center.
After 18 years of first discussion of the project, Trail’s superintendent Matthew Rakauskas and business manager Keith Glynn worked with Jim Wansacz Consulting and applied for a $500,000 grant through the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.
The wellness center will have traditional weight-lifting equipment, such as machines that students can lift with resistance. It will also have treadmills and exercise bikes. The vast majority of the exercise equipment has been the result of a $100,000 donation ($20,000 over five years) made by PS Bank in Factoryville.
The center will have classrooms, in which athletes can review films or have meetings. It will also serve other purposes from different organizations such as after-school clubs, Boy Scouts or Friends of Music.
“It will certainly be used for athletic teams, but in addition to that, there may be classes scheduled during the day or community activities in the evening,” said Rakauskas.
There will also be offices for both male coaches and female coaches. The office of the athletic trainer will be three times the size of the one in the current gymnasium. It will provide more space for treatments of students especially during practices.
The wellness center will be located on the left of the high school building. One of the cons is that it will far from the existing gym. One of the pros is that it will near the baseball field, softball field and the field hockey facilities.
The plans of the center were designed by Justine Tarrant and Brian Doran, both of HC Architects.
“It’s something that seems that is really needed here,” Tarrant said about the future wellness center. “It’s going to be a great function for the student population. The building was really designed purely out of function and the most efficient that we could to fit everything that the school really needed.”
Lackawanna Trail hopes to open the wellness center by August 2024.
