With the weather warming up and local students on spring break, the Boys and Girls Club of Seymour offered a family-friendly roller skate night and commemorated its refinished gymnasium floor in the process.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was conducted Friday to celebrate the refinishing of the wooden gymnasium floor, work that had been completed over the winter.
Later that evening, there were hourlong skate times for kids and families to try out the new floor with special lights, lasers and music provided by Jeremy Decueber’s DJ service.
Kids also were able to skate this past week at the club as a part of its healthy lifestyles programming and as a spring break activity.
Friday’s event, called Remember the Rok-Sey, was first held at the end of 2018 to commemorate the now shuttered Rok-Sey, a roller rink originally located on East County Road 725N in Rockford.
A second skate night was conducted in early January 2020, but no skate night was held at the end of the year due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
Ryon Wheeler, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Seymour, said it was unfortunate they weren’t able to hold the event.
“We knew families would be home, and we were just trying to have some great family-friendly events,” he said. “In December, it was really bad around here (due to the county’s COVID-19 infection rate), and we knew that we could not safely hold an indoor event.”
Fast forward a few months and families and children were putting on their skates and zooming around on the gym floor.
Wheeler said he was glad to offer an event to get families out of the house during spring break.
“We know families have been cooped up, and right now during spring break, families who couldn’t go do something special, they can still,” he said. “This is a way to have something special for them here in the building.”
Shawn Wininger of Commiskey attended the event with his family. He said he has taken his kids to Columbus Skateland in the past but was glad the Boys and Girls Club could have an event nearby for them to roller skate.
“It’s close for them, and they enjoy it. We just wanted to get out and let them enjoy their time with it,” he said.
Boys and Girls Club member Gavin Newcomb said he skated all week at the club with his friend, Nolan Roberts.
“It’s just a really nice way to move around,” Newcomb said. “You don’t have to run or anything. You just have to push off the wheels and just glide.”
Newcomb and Roberts said they were both very excited for the Remember the Rok-Sey event.
Completed in December, T-Mobile funded the refinishing of the gym floor.
Leigh Anne Burke-Schaad, a senior regional marketing manager for T-Mobile, said the company was excited to provide the floor.
“Last year, we started having talks (about refinishing the floor) when the pandemic first hit. We were so excited to be able to give back to the community,” she said.
Seymour company Hy-Grade Inc. refinished the gym floor, which hadn’t seen an upgrade in more than 10 years.
“We had (Hy-Grade) sand everything down, repaint the lines and put a new finish on the floor,” Wheeler said. “We’re celebrating a grand redevelopment of the gym floors.”
Across 25 years, the floor has been maintained but had never entirely been refinished. The job took about a week to complete.
The floor was sanded down, and then old layers were pulled off. Major scratches and blemishes were taken out as well as they could, and then every line was taped off and painted.
Wheeler said the new floor has been able to pop in the eyes of those who have seen it.
“From a basketball standpoint, the floor is more tacky, too, so you’re not sliding,” he said. “But having people come in and be like ‘Wow! It’s pretty bright and fresh. It looks really good,’ that was awesome. It was great to hear that.”
Skates were provided by Skatetime of Indianapolis, and Nacho Momma’s Burritos food truck set up outside the club offering Mexican cuisine. T-Mobile also stationed a truck outside offering promotions.