By Ty Regan | Associate Editor

August 28, 2023

While summer seems like a quiet period for the school, it’s actually the busiest time for changes to the building. These are among the most major changes: the hall of fame for the arts outside of Titus Auditorium, the virtual yearbook board among the trophy cases, and the newly painted varsity gym floor.

For Anderson’s athletic program, the biggest addition over the summer was the newly painted gym floor, displaying the school’s recently changed mascot. Anderson’s old mascot, which the court displayed for over two years after the change to the raptor, was painted over this summer. 

The work on the court was done by Luis Perez, owner and operator of Hero Flooring, who played basketball for Anderson from 2006 to 2009; Perez keeps his zeal for the sport by traveling the globe, designing courts.

The new design introduces a new vibrant set of painted school colors on both baselines of the court with the unique incorporation of raptor slashes. But of course, the most noticeable is the new school emblem, the raptor “A” sitting on half court.

“I love it. The orange surrounding it is awesome, and I love the claw marks,” Anderson Basketball’s Eli Upchurch (10) said.

Moving just across the hall from the varsity gym, the new display outside of Titus Auditorium shines with artistic spirit. 

This multimedia display was also done with the aid of an Anderson Alumna, Chelsea Curry from Yellow Door Creative. She worked with theater and film director Chad Weddle to pick certain elements to include in their layout from around the country. They took details out of everything from the Hollywood Walk of Fame to staircase designs, but also made the design unique to the Anderson arts program.

The layout recognizes the success and prestige of all AHS art programs. One of the major details the designers wanted was to represent each art program equally: music, theater, and film.

“If you walk around Anderson, you see an academic hall of fame, an athletic hall of fame, a military recognition, but nothing for the arts, so the hall of fame was really important to me, because we talk about equal representation,” Weddle said.

In the same lobby, a new virtual yearbook board sits among shelves of Anderson High School memorabilia. 

The board itself is an orange kiosk, about the same size as a shopping mall directory. The kiosk itself is on display, but won’t be up and running until around three months due to internet connectivity constraints. 

Once the kiosk is operating, there will be two main functions: the ability to view all fully scanned school yearbooks dating back to the 1930s, and to view yearly highlights.

The operation was funded by various donors who all had one intention in mind: to preserve school tradition and culture, and create a new way of doing so for the future. 

“It enshrines all of our biggest accomplishments. You can see these snapshots that show how geography has changed, you can see fashion change in student bodies, you can see some of the biggest achievements of students,” Joe Walla, a facilitator of the project and staff member of Anderson High School, said. 

These projects, considering their magnitude, all go to show how much Anderson continues to honor its school pride and tradition.

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