New multi-purpose facilities under construction at Purnell Swett, St. Pauls

New multi-purpose facilities under construction at both Purnell Swett and St. Pauls high schools are progressing well and should be ready for use by this fall.

The 17,500-square-foot buildings will both have a large variety of potential uses for the athletic and physical education departments at the two schools.

“The key to these is, they are classrooms, and they’re classrooms that are going to be designed for both males and females,” said Bobby Locklear, the Public Schools of Robeson County assistant superintendent for auxiliary services who is overseeing the project. “We’re going to have weight equipment that can be used by either male or female. There will be an open area for our P.E. teachers to get in there and work with the students, and it’s an open area.”

About half of each building is a large open area with a turf surface, which can be used for practice or conditioning work for nearly every sport. This includes the ability of football teams to run drills, or even to hold an indoor practice in the event of hot or inclement weather; partitions can also be put in place to turn the area into areas for batting practice for baseball or softball, or for other sports teams to run various drills.

An adjacent area at the center of each building will become the primary weight-training space for each school. The rest of the space includes male and female locker rooms, with adjoining restrooms and showers, as well as coaches offices and storage space.

“This is a great addition to Robeson County athletics,” said Glenn Patterson, PSRC athletic director. “Hopefully in the future we can move into getting them at every school, but right now I think Purnell (Swett) and St. Pauls are truly blessed to have this building going up at their school, not only for football but for all their athletics there. Weight room, film room, it’s state-of-the-art, it’s a beautiful building.”

Each building costs approximately $5.5 million; this includes not just the structure, but much of the equipment and “specialty items” inside each facility, Locklear said, as well as utility and electrical work, etc., as the buildings are constructed.

PSRC used some of the COVID-19-related funding it received to pay for the facilities, Locklear said.

“One of the criteria that we could use the funding for was to support additional space for kids to spread out,” Locklear said. “These two campuses had at that time, and still do, the smallest weight room classrooms in the county, so the decision was made to use this funding to add additional classroom space at both facilities.

At 100 feet by 175 feet, the two buildings are nearly identical, though each will be painted differently with their respective schools’ colors.

Exterior walls are now in place at each building, with the interior walls either completed or in progress throughout. As one walks through the building, it is now discernible what each various room or space will become.

PSRC believes each building is just months away from being operational.

“We are fortunate enough we were able to get started with this at the right time, so we are looking at an end of October opening date at both of these buildings,” Locklear said, adding that a dedication will likely be held at each.

At St. Pauls, the space will alleviate a crowded gym during P.E. classes and weight-training sessions. The school’s existing weight room is unusually small and has only four racks; the new building will have 16.

“It’s a multi-use classroom; at the end of the day it’s for academics, not athletics,” St. Pauls Principal Jason Suggs said. “It’s going to open up a lot of things for us, because we don’t have a mini-gym, and our weight room is smaller than any classroom at our school. So now we can have kids that want to take weight training and have the space to do different things, they’ll have that ability during the school day.”

While Suggs said the school already has to “get creative” with its P.E. classes with only the existing gym and outdoor spaces to use, the facility will allow far more creativity and flexibility for those classes.

“Now we can do different things in there; we can have classrooms in the multi-purpose (building),” Suggs said. “We’ve got an indoor part that they can do different things in. … When it rains at St. Pauls High School, you’re stuck with — everybody’s inside. This gives us another opportunity to be able to expand our curriculum.”

Purnell Swett Principal Clyde Leviner echoes some of those sentiments when talking about how the facility will help at his school.

“The name really speaks for itself: multi-purpose,” Leviner said. “It’s not a fieldhouse. It’s definitely going to be an asset for the football program; however, it’s for the P.E. department as a whole. It’s definitely going to open doors, for us to be able to have the space that we need for our physical education department. We, in the past, have been a little cramped as far as space, and now with the multi-purpose building, it will be able to hold several classrooms within that one building.”

While the building is still about four months away from opening, Leviner is already making detailed plans for how Purnell Swett can use the space.

“We’re already in the planning phases for how that’s going to look as far as scheduling,” Leviner said. “We’re looking forward to getting in that building and seeing what kind of an asset it’s going to be.”

As the opening of each building gets closer, students and staff at both schools can anticipate using a facility the likes of which they haven’t previously experienced, Suggs said.

“I’m just happy we’re giving kids in Robeson County something they’ve never had before,” Suggs said. “We’re going to have the best facilities, in the state maybe. We’re getting something that people in Robeson County normally don’t get.”