Photo by Mike Lamb Members of the Marshall Public Schools District Board inspect the Marshall High School gymnasium during a tour of schools Monday.

MARSHALL — It was a year of facilities challenges for Marshall High School. First, snow from an April blizzard got into the school’s two gymnasiums and warped the floorboards. Then an equipment fire over the summer added smoke and soot to the mix.

But the newly refinished and cleaned gyms will be open for students again starting next week, school officials said.

“Overall, things went extremely well given the circumstances,” said Activities Director Bruce Remme. Students will have access to the high school gyms starting Monday, and the first home volleyball game in the gym is scheduled for Oct. 3.

The refinished gym floor was part of a Marshall School Board facilities tour earlier this week.

The trouble in the high school gyms started in this spring’s blizzards, said Dion Caron, director of business services for Marshall Public Schools. Normally, trays in the gyms’ air intake systems hold rain or snow that gets in, and allow it to evaporate.

“But with the amount of snow we received in that blizzard, it got to the point where it was over the trays’ capacity,” Caron said. The overflow fell onto the gym floors and warped the boards.

To fix the damage, the school district had to dehumidify the floors, and then sand and refinish the floors over the summer. Caron said the original plan was to have the work done by Aug. 17. But while sanding was going on in August, a piece of equipment caught fire, creating a lot of smoke and soot in the gym area. A more thorough cleaning of both the north and south gym and their HVAC systems had to be done.

In spite of the setbacks, “Honestly, we’ve had a lot of things go our way,” Caron said. Both the floor damage and the smoke damage were covered by insurance. Caron estimated that the damage to the gym floors would have cost around $80,000 to repair. The school district had a $10,000 deductible, he said, but normal refinishing of the gym floors usually costs $6,000 to $8,000 anyway.

Besides refinishing the floors and cleaning up the gyms, Caron said some additional sensors have been installed in the gyms to help warn the district before more water damage can happen in the future.

Caron said the gym floors were repainted around Sept. 10. But athletic activities couldn’t resume right away while the floors cured.

Remme said MHS worked with Southwest Minnesota State University and the city of Marshall to help schedule athletic events and practices while the high school gyms were out of commission.

“I can’t thank enough all the different entities who helped us,” Remme said.

The main concern about not having a gym to start the school year was finding space for volleyball practices and games. Remme said the MHS volleyball team was able to use gym space at SMSU, Park Side Elementary and Marshall Middle School, and MHS was able to schedule three home contests at the Recreation/Athletic Facility at SMSU.

Finding alternate space for the Southwest Challenge volleyball tournament earlier this month was a bigger task, however.

“That was a major undertaking,” Remme said. The 32-team tournament needed a minimum of eight courts in order to work. “Luckily, we were able to secure some court rentals,” and set up the temporary volleyball courts inside the Red Baron Arena and Expo.

The work in the gymnasium also affected equipment storage for the Tiger volleyball and football teams, rain day practice space for cross-country and tennis, and physical education classes at the high school, said Remme and MHS principal Brian Jones.

“They’ve gotten creative” in order to make things work, Jones said.

Good weather — when the area had it — helped make it easier to come up with an alternative for PE classes, Jones said.

“For the most part, they’ve been able to be outside,” he said. During rainy conditions, classes also made use of space like the gymnastics room.