New York Bleachers Nearly Completed

York Institute nearing completion on new bleachers for the gym, a project Athletic Director Rodney Pile said was a long time coming.

With the basketball season looming large in the Upper Cumberland, Pile said the project has not hit any obstacles and the bleachers should be good to go for opening night. Pile said he thinks the condition of the old bleachers may have hurt their attendance to sporting events.

“This is badly needed,” Pile said. “The old bleachers were hard to walk up, they were kind of dangerous and hard to walk up. And then they were getting hard to push in, of course they were getting extremely old. And we just badly needed this little project to go through.”

Southeast based company Bleachers and Seats won the bid earlier this year and started tearing down the 40 year old bleachers four weeks ago.

“We’ve got one more section to go,” Pile said. “We got one section where our home crowd sits, where we’ve got some chair backs. So, they’re coming in November the 4th, so hopefully that week we’ll have our bleachers completed.”

Since the school was built in 1980, Pile said there has been minimal changes to the gym and more specifically the bleachers. This is the first major project to the gym that York has undertaken in his five years as athletic director.

He said with basketball season coming in quick, he is excited for the community of Jamestown to come out and see the Dragons play ball and see the new, safer bleachers.

“I believe there is a level of excitement, hopefully we’ll get some more bodies in the gym,” Pile said. “It’s always exciting when you have games and the fans are there cheering your team on.”