It took many years of dreaming, planning, design and construction, but the Putnam County Charter School Board finally cut the ribbon Sept. 16, on a sprawling, new athletic center at Putnam County High School, a few miles north of Eatonton on the east side of Hwy. 441.
Set deep behind the main campus buildings, beyond the ag building and a pair of already existing baseball fields, the new complex features a central building with boys’ and girls’ locker facilities, showers, an equipment room, coaches’ offices and a concession stand for fans. Outside are three full-size soccer/football fields complete with netted goals and football uprights and eight tournament- ready tennis courts, plus a pole barn with livestock stalls and a fenced-in grazing pasture.
According to Putnam School Board Superintendent Eric Arena, when Putnam High opened 12 years ago there already existed a master plan to expand and improve the school’s sports facilities.
“It was probably about five years ago that we started talking about using some of the SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) dollars, a local, one-cent sales tax, in order to work on some projects, capital projects,” Arena explained. “This project’s been going on for probably about two years now, by the time you got the architect involved and then the construction.”
Robertson Loia Roof Architects & Engineers in Alpharetta handled the design work, while Parrish Construction Group, also operating out of Alpharetta with facilities in Perry, handled everything from excavation to the finishing touches on the new PCHS complex.
“As we continue to grow, we’d love to be able to put a crosscountry track out there, too, a cross-country trail running through the woods,” Arena added. “And in this phase, we did not put lights on the fields.
The tennis courts have lights, but the practice fields don’t, at least not presently. But what we did is put electrical conduit out there already, so if or when we decide to add lights in the future, we already have that taken care of and won’t have to dig it all up.”
The school also has another 40 acres or so of undeveloped land adjacent to the new facility, Arena explained, so ideally the high school could build a new stadium there someday for its football team. The Putnam flagship War Eagles currently play their home games several miles away at Al Reaves Field, behind the Putnam Middle School on the east side of town near Putnam General Hospital.
“In the long run, what we’re trying to do here is prevent the need for our students to get in a car or get in a bus just to go someplace else to play or practice,” Arena said.