The brooms in the old Creighton Sportex curling rink are no longer used for drawing to the button – now they’re being used to clean up sawdust.
The former curling rink, vacant for several years, is now being utilized by Creighton Community School. The school’s shop program first moved into the rink after Creighton began offering high school classes.
Over the past decade, the shop has grown from a small portion of the rink to taking up the whole space.
“With the addition of the high school in Creighton, our old shop wasn’t quite big enough to accommodate all the students,” said shop teacher Ryan Biberdorf. “We had an empty building right beside us and took it over to accommodate the growing high school.”
The once-vacant area now buzzes with activity. Four sheds built by a school construction class occupy one corner of the building, with a full woodworking area and classroom nearby. Each morning, the area is filled with young woodworkers and construction students.
A welding area and a mechanical shop take up the rest of the space.
“Everything’s in there,” said Biberdorf. “We have automotive, construction, drafting, woodworking, welding, machining… the only thing still left in the school are our cooking classes, in the home-ec room.”
While the school’s shop programs have taken place in the former rink for several years, many in the community aren’t aware of how the school uses the space.
“People come in there, parents here and there, and they’re just blown away,” said Biberdorf. “They had no idea that the Sportex has the shop and everything we have in it. It wasn’t advertised, that’s for sure. The community doesn’t seem to know about it that much.”
Students from grades 7 to 12 can bring in their personal projects, including their own cars, trucks and snowmobiles, to work on during class time.
While that means the students get hands-on experience and save money fixing their vehicles, it also adds pressure: if a student makes a mistake, they’ll find out on the drive home. One student installed a battery incorrectly last year in his own truck, frying it.
“We had to take it to the fire hall,” said Devan Deminick, the student. “They needed to pry it out.”
Despite the occasional hiccup, accidental horror stories like that are few and far between. The facility at the Sportex provides students a spacious area for projects, a space they could have a hard time finding otherwise.
“Being the smaller centre we are, offering the amount that we do and having the facilities we have, it’s quite nice,” said Biberdorf.
