West Greene honors WPIAL championship sports teams with hallway murals
The West Greene varsity softball team poses in from of their own mural near the high school gym. The district had the mural put up last month, following the girls’ 2016 season which took them to the state championship game.
Gary Whyte, left, a West Greene wrestling coach, points to his high school picture on a new mural of the 1993-94 West Greene wrestling team that won the WPIAL Championship that year. West Greene Superintendent Brian Jackson also points himself out of the mural, as he was an assistant wrestling coach at the time. The mural was put up last month.
ROGERSVILLE – West Greene School District added some color to its high school hallway near the gym last month by putting up murals celebrating two of the district’s most successful athletic teams.
One of the murals is a team picture of the 2016 varsity softball team that went to the state championship in June in State College. On either side of the picture is a state bracket and a WPIAL bracket from the girls’ winning season.
The other mural is a team picture of the district’s only other WPIAL champions – the 1993-94 varsity wrestling team.
“We’re wanting to honor kids as much as inspire kids,” West Greene Athletic Director Bill Simms said. “Younger kids who see it might start thinking that they want to be the next kid up there.”
Simms said the district had been wanting to do something like the murals to commemorate the wrestling team, and when the softball team did so well this year, they decided to do the murals for each team with a WPIAL championship.
The murals, which stretch from floor to ceiling, were done by Printscape Imaging and Graphics last month and cost about $3,400 total, which were paid for by the boosters clubs.
Simms said though the murals look like they were painted, the company actually printed out the murals in large adhesive strips and placed them together, sticking them to the wall by applying heat. The only way to tell that they aren’t painted on is a barely visible seam between strips.
“We’re very proud for what we have,” Simms said. “The kids loved it.”
Simms said he’s received positive feedback from other districts in the area as well as from their own students. The softball girls said they “didn’t think it was going to be this big.”
Simms said the teens in the 1993 mural are all grown now. Most of them have seen the mural and are proud of it and their high school accomplishments.
Gary Whyte, who was one of the top wrestlers on the team at the time, is now working for the district as a wrestling coach for the junior high school students.
“We’re always looking for ways to promote wrestling,” he said. “I think having the mural here will push our kids to excel and train harder and want to do better.”
Brian Jackson, West Greene’s new superintendent, is also on the wrestling mural since he was an assistant coach for the district back then.
“That’s something that kids can shoot for,” he said about the mural. “Some of these guys have kids in school now, so they can see what their fathers accomplished.”
Simms said they’ve received a great amount of community feedback about the murals.
“When we have good teams, people go crazy and they always support us,” he said.