NEW BETHLEHEM, Pa. (EYT) — The Clarion County Commissioners honored Redbank Valley for making it to the state high school football championship during their work session on Tuesday, January 4.
(Pictured above, from left: Clarion County Commissioners Ted Tharan, Ed Heasley, and Wayne Brosius and Redbank Valley Football Coach Blane Gold.)
All three commissioners were in attendance at the Redbank Valley School District work session and presented Blane Gold, Redbank’s varsity football coach, with a proclamation for leading the Bulldog’s to the PIAA Class A state championship in Hershey last month. Redbank ultimately lost that game.
“The school board ought to give themselves a pat on the back because you’re the ones that hired Blane to coach football,” said Tharan. “The success he’s had is very obvious.”
Tharan said the last time a Clarion County team made it to the state finals for football was 32 years ago.
“It’s quite a feat. It doesn’t happen much in Clarion County,” he added.
“It doesn’t matter what the outcome was,” said Redbank Superintended Amy Rupp. “As soon as they came out of the tunnel and saw those lights, we were winners. Redbank represented, and we supported those boys.”
Gold expressed his thanks for the support the administration and the school board gave the team, which played a crucial role in taking them to states.
“During that run, as logistics came out of place, between him (high school principal Roddy Hartle) and Mrs. Rupp and the school board, whether it was booking a hotel, organizing a bus, getting food paid for, that’s exactly what Mr. Hartle let me do, he let me coach,” he said.
Gold said the operators of Hersheypark Stadium (where the state finals game was played) had informed him Redbank drew 1,700 supporters compared to only 600 on competitor Bishop Guilfoyle’s side.
“A coach is only as successful as the administrative support team, so thank you for all your support during this run,” he concluded.
(Pictured above: Gold addresses the school board.)
Auditorium lighting
The school board discussed the next steps to fixing their stage lighting system, which Rupp described as “not working at all.” She said they had already received a $195,000.00 bid from the Hermitage-based event production company, Satin Sound, for the project. The district is soliciting two further bids this month, as well.
Rupp said it would take six months before any company could begin work on the project due to the long waiting times for acquiring lighting supplies.
“Either way we go, their bids are saying it’s going to take six months. The average time is six months to get the lights in,” she said.
Many on the board were concerned the scope of work for this project was not clearly defined and that the district needed to bring in an independent architect or engineer to create a bid specification.
“I’m asking how are you making sure these three bids are apples to apples, or a standard of design?” asked board member Jason Barnett.
“It’s a win-win situation if you have one person that doesn’t have anything to do with it and has knowledge and says, ‘you need this, this, this, this,’ and get a bid out of that. That’s the smart thing to do,” said board member Dee Bell.
After much discussion, the board decided to solicit an independent architect to create specifications for the project for companies to bid on.
