Bonita’s Principal Is Seeing Things, Envisions New Gymnasium Where Now Only Grass Grows

Holding Court: Bonita Principal Bob Kerterling holds the plans to proposed new gymnasium on the Bonita campus, set back about 20 feet from D Street.

Why is Bonita Principal Bob Ketterling smiling?

In his hands, he’s holding the renderings of Bonita’s new double-court gymnasium that will literally change the face of Bonita High School forever.

Mind you, they are only drawings, but Ketterling can feel and touch the future. By the end of 2011 or the start of 2012, Bonita will be the proud home of a state-of-the-art gym with an impressive lobby, team rooms, ample seating and tasteful translucent lighting. While not quite the Taj Mahal, it will, when completed,  give  Bonita a true home court advantage.

“It’s real exciting,” said Ketterling. “You’re right. I am pumped.”

According to the timetable, in 2010, the California State Department of Architecture will review the design plans of the Dougherty and Dougherty architectural firm and then the construction phase of the project will go out to bid, a process expected to take up to a year. In early 2011, shovels should be in the ground.

“The students who are sophomores now should be playing in the new gym when they are seniors,” Ketterling said.

The old gymnasium — and all its creaks, leaks, memories and ghosts — will remain and actually undergo its own modernization after the new gym is completed. A courtyard will connect the two gyms and an impressive gate will create a new entrance for Bonita High School.

Such a renovation will certainly be the capstone to Ketterling’s career. “Better the capstone than the tombstone,” Ketterling suggested.

More than providing the campus with an overdue facelift, the new gymnasium will open more practice and game day possibilities for players and coaches. Coaches will be able to conduct three full court practices at the same time. No longer will teams be competing for court space and getting home after 9 p.m. on homework nights.

Even when the new gym is built, the old gym will remain and be refurbished.

Interestingly, when AB bond funds became available, early plans centered on creating a new structure to be shared by the wrestling and dance teams.

“The original idea was to build another regulation court, then a wrestling/dance room over here,” Ketterling said, pointing toward D Street, “but we couldn’t make that concept work for us. Wrestling and dance don’t fit in the same building. Think about it. Wrestlers want to be hot and stinky out on the mats. That’s not good for our dance program, which wants to be kind of light and airy, with mirrors, hardwood floors and rails on the walls.”

Given the incompatibility of beauties and wrestling beasts, a new idea of putting all of the new square footage into one new building, about 25% larger than the current gym, was advanced and eventually approved.

Once construction begins on the new gymnasium, the old gym will continue to host its normal indoor schedule of events. After completion of the new gym, the old gym will finally get its own makeover, including upgrades to its outmoded bathrooms and over-loaded electrical systems.

So Bonita will enjoy the best of both worlds soon. Alumni will still be able to enter the old gym and inhale the musty smells of their glory days and Bonita’s stars of the future will have a new showcase facility to carve out their own legacies and earn new CIF banners for Bonita to hang from the rafters.

“It should really be something,” Ketterling said, standing on the approximate spot of the projected new gym’s centercourt, where for now only grass grows.