by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — It isn’t like we didn’t see this coming.

The Wellington junior high building was recently sold to Missouri developer George Duncan of Gold Nugget Properties for $11,100 at a previous school board meeting ending what has been a long journey in getting the building sold (see story here).

No one quite knows what will happen next, but the Wellington Community Theater people were told that they would need to vacate the building by July 15.

“Our best hope is to return to Memorial Auditorium, and we are currently talking to the chamber about it,” said Lisa Vargas, President of the Wellington Community Theater.

But the community theater isn’t alone in the upheaval. So is the Wellington High School football program.

Although the classes were moved to the new middle school complex in the early part of the 2000s, the junior high building has been key to the functionality of home varsity high school football games.

Both the home and visiting teams as well as the game referee officials go to the Wellington junior high locker rooms for pregame and halftime.

If you have viewed the video starring Wellington sophomore football player Cade Phelps and yours truly above, one can see the dilemma the high school coaches now have.

Do they take the teams back to the Wellington Middle school, a quarter-mile trip… or do they find alternative methods if the old junior high is no longer available?

Wellington will be battling Goddard Eisenhower on Sept. 11 in week #2 of the varsity football game.

As the video illustrates, Phelps did what was called a football jog. He left from the west gate of the Sellers Park football field. We would have started on the sidelines but the gate was locked.

When Phelps reached the Wellington Middle School east entrance doors for which the direct path to the locker rooms, he ran it in 2 minutes 25 seconds. As stated in the video. If the WHS football team was played exclusively by Mr. Phelps, it would take about five minutes to go from Sellers Park to the locker room below.

During halftime, there is a 15 minute intermission. So with Phelps alone, there would be 10 minutes for the halftime speech, go to the restroom, do rewrapping and the general wind down.

That’s doable.

But then there is the warm up and stretching before the opening of the second half. Each team gets three minutes. The linemen will stretch, the quarterback will throw the ball around, the receivers will run routes.

So that would leave seven minutes in the locker room. That might make for a short half-time speech. Hopefully, the Crusaders are doing well.

But what the video does not show is the peripheral factors.

The Wellington football team may have 50 to 70 football players, perhaps more if they include the freshmen. Then you have an opposing team. Let’s say Wellington is playing Rose Hill, — which incidentally is only used hypothetically in the video as an example since we play the Rockets on the road this year.

Let’s say Rose Hill brings down 60 to 80 players. You could easily have 150 players go through the small door on the south entrance of the middle school.

That doesn’t include the football coaches, the managers and any kind of equipment that may need to be transported back and fourth.

Couple that with slick floors, potential high school hormonal boy horse play, vehicle traffic on 9th street, fan traffic in the northwest corner, and two opponents who may have been verbally sparring in the first half, and there’s a lot of variables to this equation that would cut into the seven minute halftime speech.

Wellington head football coach Tyler Ryan said the Monday after the school board meeting when the building was sold, he had not been told of the sale and was not quite sure what the football team would do next.

“We can always extend halftime,” Ryan said. “We do that on football homecoming weekend. We’ll ask for an extra five extra minutes or something like that.”

He thought maybe time wouldn’t start until the football teams got to the parking lot corner.

The WHS football team, as most teams do, have rituals throughout the day and evening. Before a home game, the Wellington boys dress in the middle school locker room, and walk individually to the football field for general warm ups. The football team leaves the field and goes to the old junior high locker room where Ryan delivers his pregame speech.

“His pre-game speeches are very, very good,” said Tony Ybarra, an assistant football coach. “I don’t think it would have the same effect in say a parking lot.”

And that presents another dilemma. Does the football team walk back to the middle school for the pregame speech after already being at Sellers Park, get pumped up with a pregame speech and then proceed with another quarter mile run over the bridge to get to the football field and go through the cheerleader banner?

Ryan said the alternative is to go to the sidelines, something that is done at some smaller schools. While the junior varsity and middle school coaches conduct their halftime speeches on the football field itself, that’s an impossibility because there is always a halftime show on the field on varsity Friday nights.

“I’m not sure I want to conduct a halftime speech in front of other people,” Ryan said.

There are rumors that football halftime speeches aren’t always suitable for younger children.

Then there are the refs. Yes, the officials make us boo and hiss, but they too need a place to congregate at halftime, use the restroom, etc.

Brandon Wilmoth, a former middle school football coach in Wellington, suggested that the officials could use the baseball locker rooms at Hibbs Hooten Field.

The question on everyone’s mind is, are there other alternatives?

Perhaps, it will be a one year thing.

An auxiliary gymnasium is being built at the Wellington Middle School as part of the Security bond issue passed by voters 12 months ago. It will be located in the southeast corner of the school on the upper lever where people now pick up their children. Wellington Middle School Principal Jamie Ybarra said the construction will start sometime in the 2015-16 school year and could be completed by next summer.

Ryan had expressed the thought that the auxiliary gym’s locker rooms could be used for the football teams. This could reduce the time getting to and from the current locker room dungeons. Again, that depends on a lot of things. Would the locker rooms be big enough to house a football team?

“It’s not the ideal situation,” Ryan said. “But it will all work out. I’ve been at schools where they didn’t even have a home football field.”

Wellington activities director Brian Buchanan and Wellington Superintendent Rick Weiss were unavailable to interview for this story.

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