Work begins on football, track walls of fame

Members of the Douglas High football team and Block D letterman's club joined Valley mason Mark Duryee Saturday to help construct a pair of identical brick walls on the northeast end of the Big George Sports Complex Saturday.

After nearly a day's work, the group had nearly completed one wall and made significant progress on the second, but even so it still simply looked like two brick walls.

When complete though, the structures will serve as monuments to standout football and track athletes of the past, as well as recognizing some of the significant donors to the renovation of the Douglas sports complex.

"This has been a dream of ours to provide recognition to the athletes who have competed here on this field and on this track in the past," said Block D advisor Ernie Monfilletto, who is also an assistant coach with the football team. "They deserve to be recognized."

Block D took on the walls as one of the clubs big projects of the year.

"I'm really proud of the kids' effort to do this," Monfilletto said. "A lot of the money for the project came from people in the community who sponsored Block D kids.

Along with that, the project received numerous donations of labor and material.

"The outpouring has been unbelievable for this," Monfilletto said.

Ray VanWinkle of V&C Construction did the excavation for the project, Basalite provided the blocks, Stiltz Tile donated materials, Bing Materials helped with the cost of cement Duryee did much of the masonry and Three Castles Engineering and Gary Thurm provided the design.

L.A. Thomas will provide the finish work on the eight-foot walls.

The high school athletes arrived early Saturday morning to work on the project.

"We had a lot of kids out here helping out, probably more than we needed," Monfilletto said. "We could've used some more skill help because it is such an involved project, but they worked very hard.'

When completed, the football wall will carry the names of the 38 inductees that Douglas has compiled over the years and the track wall will bear the names of the school record holders.

"We'll do tiles or plates that will have the athletes' names and the years they competed here," Monfiletto said. "It's been a long time coming, but it'll be worth the effort once it is complete.

Monfilletto said his hope is to have the wall competely finished when Douglas plays its season-opening Hall of Fame game Aug. 29 against Las Vegas High School.

"If it works out, we'll have the new inductees' names up there for the Vegas game," he said. "It'll look great."