The Temple gymnasium has been under repair since Oct. 17 from flood damage and mercury contamination, leaving students with no place for their physical education classes and, just as basketball season began, no home court for games. In all, 259 students who used the gymnasium were affected by the closure. The community, however, has stepped up to make sure the classes and the games can go on.

“We’ve had to become innovative to accomplish what we need to accomplish as far as the curriculum is concerned,” said Assistant Principal Tim Gribben.

The school has received help. The boys’ and girls’ basketball teams are practicing at the Temple Recreation Center in the afternoons and the school’s wrestling matches have been held there since early November. The recreation center and the high school have long had a reciprocal relationship, so allowing the school to use the facilities for practice and wrestling matches was really an easy decision, said Thad Ferguson, recreation director.

“It’s actually a great relationship,” Ferguson said. “They do their softball and baseball games over here at our park and we play our football games at the high school. So, we kind of help each other out, just depending on what season’s going on.”

Temple Middle School is hosting the high school’s basketball games and opened the concession stand for the high school Athletic Booster Club to be operated during the games. Principal Charles Johnson echoed Ferguson’s sentiments about its sister school, Temple High.

“We knew they would need something to do for games and everything, and we have a gym that’s capable of providing that, so we just said, ‘Come on,’” said Johnson, who taught at the high school for 13 years before coming to the middle school. “It never was a question. They needed us.”

The middle school had to postpone its dance Friday night, but it was worth the inconvenience to help out the high school, he said. The high school will play probably four games at the middle school before the gymnasium is finished.

The high school is lucky and thankful to have the middle school and the recreation department both willing to help, Gribben said. The fact that they are so close is a bonus. Transportation is still an issue, but it’s minimal because the facilities are nearby.

The school has done some shuffling of classroom space to make room for the displaced physical education classes. Right now, the staff conference meeting room is being used as the physical education classroom. The students are changing into their P.E. clothes in a restroom and doing core strengthening exercises in a hallway in the ninth-grade academy. Since Thursday, students have been able to lift weights in a temporary weight room set up in the shop classroom in the agriculture building.

When the students were locked out of the gym, they lost access to the equipment.

“I’ve got three weight training classes and Coach Rowe’s got two,” said Donna Johnson, one of the three physical education teachers at Temple High. “Those classes were just stagnant for a period of three or four weeks. The only thing we could do was go out and walk around the track or run.”

With the rain, there were some days when the students didn’t even have those options. So the school did some borrowing and some bartering to get equipment for the students. It was able to find some used weightlifting equipment for a good price and it has borrowed some equipment from other schools, such as Sharp Creek Elementary.

“One of our coaches works down there,” Johnson said. “So, I just e-mailed him and asked him if we could borrow some mats.”

She set up the mats in the hallway outside her classroom for the students to use on rainy days when they couldn’t go outside, and lately that’s been a lot. The new weight room is giving the students another option for their workout.

Everyone, both students and staff are relieved to see progress made on the gymnasium and to have some idea when it will be ready for use again. The gymnasium is scheduled to be finished about a week after students return from Christmas break – sometime in the second week of January. It has helped ease everyone’s mind, Gribben said.

However, he knows this probably won’t be the last unforeseen problem the school will have to face. Working in a school often requires flexibility and ingenuity.

“It’s just another challenge to face,” Gribben said.