By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
A new tradition has returned at Great Bend High School: painting concrete under a hot July sun. The GBHS Class of 2023 received approval last year to begin painting Senior Parking Spots. Monday morning, the new group of seniors began re-personalizing many of the stalls.
"Us as WAC Leadership, we're going to carry on the tradition that the seniors before us left," said senior Paige Thexton. "We set up one day in the morning and let all the seniors that were eligible come in and pick their spots."
To be eligible, seniors must have a grade-point average of at least 3.0, as well as minimal tardies or other disciplinary issues. The students also pay $20 to pick their spot, but that's a fraction of the cost as many students are spending more than $120 for various colors of paint to bring their stalls to life. The stalls are reserved for that student from 7:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. on school days.
"We opened the doors at 7 and there were kids sitting outside the school doors at 5:30 trying to get the best spot," Thexton said. "It was first-come, first-serve."
This year's class may benefit from last year's project as some of the concrete has already been primed and painted. Money raised from last year's stalls will be used to clean painted stalls that will not be repainted this year. Makeila Straub selected a front-row stall on the south side of the high school that was not painted last year.
"It's a lot of tedious work, especially on this asphalt where you can't get into all the little crevices with your rollers," she said. "We had to use some brushes, and we did a little layer of white first just to have a base coat."
Images are approved by administration ahead of the paint. Straub picked a prime location, but her stall features a large, sandy crack she will have to paint around. Her image: a seagull from the Pixar film "Finding Nemo," proclaiming her space as "Mine, mine, mine!"
Heat indices approaching 110 degrees this week will not slow down the approximately 50 GBHS seniors who picked stalls. "It's terrible," Straub said. "But on the bright side, your paint dries faster."