The gymnasium at Steinbach Christian High School will be back in use earlier than expected. It has been closed since January 10th when a ball hit a sprinkler head and caused thousands of litres of a water to rain down on the floor. Principal Emery Plett says a restoration company was hoping to have the floor dried out and repaired by the end of February. But, he adds, it won't take that long.

"They have done a great job in getting things dried out and so we were fortunate enough that, with a light screening is what they call it, a light sanding, they've been able to level the floor. And, with two more coats of finish put on, we will be able to be back in our gym on Monday."

Plett adds they will do a further evaluation in spring whether to sand down the entire floor and re-finish it.

"The plan is to re-evaluate the condition of the floor in spring once the humidity levels have settled throughout the layers of flooring that exist in a gym floor. There are some boards that did face some cracking and so those may need to be replaced and the plan would then be to do a full sand down of the surface which would then involve a complete re-painting of all the lines and re-finishing. But, we've been assured by the floor company that once that's done, our floor would be back to the way it was prior to our incident."

Plett says thanks to gym rentals at Steinbach EMC, Steinbach Mennonite Church and the Hanover School Division they were able to run all of their Phys. Ed. and athletic programs plus tournaments during the past month.