TISDALE — The Tisdale Tornados Football Booster Club are fundraising for a new $40,000 replacement football tower at the Tisdale Middle & Secondary School, which they’re hoping to have ready by next season.
The club is a parent-run group which operates the concession and runs fundraising efforts for the football program at Tisdale Middle and Secondary School. In the past they have supplied the team with equipment and travel funds.
Tanya Wassill, the club’s president, said the current tower being used to make announcements and record the plays for the team have had a number of problems. These included relying on a ladder to get to the top, utilizing an old speaker system, limited storage space, and inconvenient site location.
“The tower has become something that the club needs,” Wassill said.
“It’s not big enough to house the people up top. You have to crawl a ladder to get to the top piece to be able to see over top any of the bleachers. It’s quite cramped, it doesn’t have good site location or visibility to the field.”
The new tower is planned to be shifted to improve visibility of the field, include storage space for equipment, include a flight of stairs, and have the canteen operate out of its lower floor.
Wassill said a new tower would provide a better place for a camera to film games.
“The school division does share those videos back and forth amongst the teams for analysis,” she said. “It will just help all the teams in general just have better video and improve the game itself.”
Wassill said Tornados alums have committed about $8,000 to $10,000 for the project, and Farber Contracting has agreed to donate volunteer labour. The club itself has set aside about $4,000 from previous fundraisers. The NESD has committed about $5,000 for the project.
Work is set to begin this summer, with the goal being to have the tower in operation by the school year’s beginning in September.
“We feel pretty confident that we will raise the funds we need and the booster club did put aside some of those funds,” she said. “We also have funds in the background that haven’t been specified for the tower but we’ve kept for equipment that we would utilize and just work at fundraising to replenish what we set aside for equipment.”
Tisdale council approved a motion on June 28 to run the fundraiser through the town, which allows charitable tax receipts to be issued when donations are made at the town office. The club is also accepting in-kind donations.
