As Bishop Noll Institute continues to renovate and update the facilities around the campus, the next renovation on the agenda will be the boys locker room. This $35,000 alumni-raised project will begin when the football season comes to an end, and will continue throughout winter break.

Bishop Noll is doing this renovation in an effort to modernize the school one area at a time. The school can thank the Bishop Noll alumni, specifically the classes of 1975, ‘76, and ‘77, for the pushing the project forward and raising the money for the new renovations. This whole project began in 2012 when these classes held a reunion at Bishop Noll. It was at this reunion the alumni had a chance to walk around and view first hand the poor state of the boys locker room.

“Though there were improvements in many areas, they saw that the locker room appeared virtually unchanged from when they were in school,” said Mr. Paul Mullaney, president of Bishop Noll. “So that prompted the guys from those classes to jump-start a fund-raising effort to bring it up to date.”

Following the reunion the classes began the fundraising, a total of $35,000 has been raised since 2012. The effort grew when Vince Berta, Class of 1976, committed to donate a “dollar-for-dollar” match of what Bishop Noll made. Berta would give a dollar for each additional dollar Noll made up to $10,000. When this offer was on the table, the alumni, “responded in grand fashion, donating more than $10,000, meaning more than $20,000 came in this year for the project. One-hundred percent of these monies were donated by former Noll athletes specifically for this project,” according to Mullaney.

Many of those who have donated were former football players at Bishop Noll. Along with these football players, Mullaney (class of ‘77) led the push for the renovation.

The locker room renovations will be completed in phases; the physical education lockers will be the first to be replaced. Following the locker renovations will be the team locker room. New paint, new lighting, and new flooring will help modernize the area. Outside of the team locker room, the physical education lockers will be made larger from their current cube size. The overall height will stay the same, but the individual lockers will be three times the size of the current ones. Inside the team locker room, the lockers will be placed around the perimeter of the room and not in the middle to make more space in the room. Mullaney describes these lockers as “open stadium-type lockers with shelf and footlocker security capacity, and they are wide enough that you actually can sit inside it on the base if you’re changing your socks or shoes.”

This renovation is another step forward in the administration’s plan to continue upgrading the school and campus. The next project will be the media center.

“Before school started, we put in new ceiling tiles, new lights, carpeting and paint [in the media center],” Mullaney said. “Upcoming phases will include new book shelves, a reading area and glass-partitioned small meeting rooms along the back wall for group projects or small committee meetings.”

Mullaney expects the renovations to the boy’s locker room to completed when the students return for the second semester in January.

“We’re excited to move forward on the locker room project, knowing the end result is only a few months away,” Mullaney said. “We are grateful to our alumni and donors who are helping us show some love to this solid but aging building as we make improvements to benefit the students of today and tomorrow, all those who will be blessed to receive what a Bishop Noll education has to offer.”