During Tuesday’s Opp City Schools Board of Education meeting, superintendent Michael Smithart recommended the board approve an agreement for services with McKee and Associates to design and oversee the construction of a new weight room at Opp High School.

When OHS athletic director Brent Hill heard that Smithart made the recommendation, he said he was overjoyed.

“That was one of the things I had discussed with him before I took the job,” Hill said. “I’m very fortunate that the board and superintendent supported it.”

Board members said there is no obligation to build the new weight room, which would be connected with the current multipurpose room adjacent to the football practice field. The board did decide that they’d see if they could find the budget to build it, maybe during the next fiscal year.

Hill said, hopefully, that the new weight room would be around 4,800 square feet, and that it would fulfill all of the school’s needs for workouts in its sports activities.

“It would be a great addition,” he said.

Hill said the current weight room can hold somewhere around 20 players. The new one, he added, would be able to hold 60.

“Right now, we have to break up into three stations because we can’t fit kids in there,” Hill said. “If we could fit all of them in one area at a time, then that would be great.”

Hill said that everything would be able to fit in the new facility, which would be square-shaped for easy installation of weights and other workout equipment.