Campus additions planned for Athens Academy - Multiple Athletics - ABH

Athens Academy completed a large infrastructure improvement just before the end of the school year, and while the next athletic-related building project on the school’s agenda may not have a lot of sex appeal, it will serve a very important function.

Construction on six new tennis courts – located on the same location as the school’s original courts – was completed just as the 2018 season was coming to an end, said athletic director Kevin Petroski this week.

“Just as the season ended, we completed work on six new tennis courts,” said Petroski. “It was such a wet winter. We started right before Christmas and it just took a while, so each team played on them one time this season.”

Petroski added that the boys and girls tennis teams played “home” matches at several locations, including Athens Country Club and the Athens-Clarke County Tennis Center, as they waited for their courts to be finished.

The main project on Athens Academy’s summer docket includes the construction of a new facility near the school’s artificial-turf field (referred to by the Spartan faithful as “the middle-school field”) located off Rockinwood Drive.

“We are building a new storage facility, restrooms and an outdoor basketball court near our artificial turf field,” said Petroski. “We’re building that this summer. That will be a huge help to the soccer teams and football teams that use that area. They just broke ground and the hope is that will be done before school starts, or at least sometime close to it.”

The school has also completed the planning stages for improvements at historic Slaughter Field and fund-raising is set to begin soon, Petroski said.

The new plan calls for building a field house that the football, soccer and cross country teams will call home. The split-level facility will also have permanent restrooms and a concession stand on the visitors’ side of the field.

“That may not seem like much, but to us that’s big,” said Petroski. “We have to put porta-johns out there at football games for visitors and that’s not really the way we want to welcome people to campus.”