15 Aug Praise Point’s New Gym Floor

The Van Wert Times-Bulletin published an interesting article about the gym floor which has been installed at the Praise Point UB church in Willshire, Ohio. The floor came from the old Parkway High School in Rockford, Ohio. Parkway was demolished earlier this summer, but not before the parquet gym floor could be removed.

Praise Point hosted an appreciation dinner on August 12 for the volunteers who helped move and install the parquet floor in the church’s gym.

Praise Point bought about two-thirds of the gym floor for $150. The other 18 feet were bought for a new fitness center in Columbus, Ohio.The floor was actually fairly new, having been installed in the school just a few years ago.
The wood floor was cut into sections 45 inches wide, with lengths ranging up to 72 feet (teams of nearly 30 volunteers were needed to carry the long sections). The pieces were then hauled to the new Praise Point building. They were short some volunteers for the last few loads, so they recruited a baseball team to help.

Altogether, over 60 volunteers spent two weeks cutting out the pieces in Rockford, moving them to Willshire, and reassembling the floor at Praise Point. The church event took the wall plaques which thanked the people who donated money for the Parkway floor; the plaques now hang at Praise Point. Each free throw lane includes big black panther paw prints.