Boosting Athletics

Boosting Athletics – Gardner MA

The City of Gardner Massachusetts has accomplished successes in Boosting Athletics, including, but not limited to:

GardnerMagazine.com spoke with Gardner MA Mayor Michael Nicholson about the City’s accomplishments on the athletic front. Here’s what he had to say.

Mayor Nicholson: I think our biggest and most prominent team this past year, with our cheerleaders going to 2 different national championships, placing in one, and then coming in first with the Judges Choice award at the second fall event. They’ve been someone who I’ve been very proud of and have really been good ambassadors of the Chair, City, across the nation and across the state as they compete. And that’s what our students athletes are, they’re ambassadors for our school system, to these other locations around the community. And additionally from that, our basketball teams did excellent this year. Our hockey teams made it to the state finals at one point. This is something that we’ve really invested a lot of time and effort in, and our coaches are doing what they can to make sure our students build these positive memories here in Gardner To aid them with that, we’ve completed the construction of the Watkins Field facility, with the new bathroom concession stand being completed just last month. Renovations have been done to the LaChance Gymnasium at Gardner High School and Landry Auditorium at Gardner High School. The practice fields have all been redone. So there’s a lot the city’s done to support those. And I really can’t thank our athletic director, Dan Forte, enough for the work and the time and the effort and the care he brings to the job each and every day, to make sure our students have what they need to be successful and make those memories.

The Mayor of Gardner Massachusetts explained what the City of Gardner is doing differently to be so accomplished in these areas:

Mayor Nicholson: I think as we finally realized that we need to invest in ourselves, and you hear this a lot when you’re taking, you know, financial literacy classes, when you’re, you know, here life planning classes and things of that in college and in high school. That the first person you should invest in is yourself, because that’s how you better yourself, you make yourself more marketable for things in the future, be it if you’re taking a class, if you’re getting a certification or things of that. Now lets take that on the macro level and put that into our roles here in the city. If we invest in ourselves, we give people a reason to invest back in up. Because they know that that investment will pay off in the long run, because we’re willing to work and partner with them. And that’s the biggest thing. If we feel like City Hall is this closed off, bricked up building in the middle of downtown that is removed from what’s going on in the community, then no one’s going to want to in Gardner and make that their investment. But if we can show were willing to go out there and work with them and bring them to where they need to be, then that’s when you build those true partnership connections out there. And its how we really get to where we need to be.

Gardner Massachusetts focuses on details such as replacing older uniforms worn by its cheerleaders. As it turned out, this was one of the categories they received praise in by the judges.

Mayor Nicholson: Yes. It’s one of those things that if you’re in decades old uniforms that, you know, have, Have their useful life with them and the wears and tears just cant be repaired that much anymore, you don’t feel proud of the work you do. And whether it may be a self consciously or something that you may not even realize. That there’s just something about the confidence boost you get from looking uniform across the board, let alone showing that you’re representing something that says your city’s name on it. As you go out into these other locations. And that’s why we got the cheerleaders, the uniforms, that’s why we got the Gardner High School band new uniforms a couple years ago. Particularly in places like now. Where after the COVID 19 pandemic, we didn’t have the opportunity during the pandemic to fundraise as much as we did. So our finances were low in terms of our booster club fundraising That would normally go to paying for those uniforms. At the same time, the cheerleaders are graded in these competitions on their uniforms. And how uniform they look amongst each other. The quality of the uniforms, the way they’re upkept. And if those are things that our students are now being scored on, that’s completely outside their skill set, And solely on how much the community is willing to invest in that team. I think that doesn’t represent Gardner on a larger, bigger scale either. So that’s why well do what we can to make sure that were investing in our students when we can.

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