The La Center Community Stadium was built through the hard work of community members and fully funded by donations, but it was missing one thing: restrooms.
To help fix that, Miriam Bradley coordinated a fundraiser that raised over $30,000 on May 21.
Bradley, who is from La Center, felt the urge to take action when she needed to assist a family member while at the stadium.
“I was sitting in a stadium that had no bathrooms, and I had to bring my 91-year-old father-in-law home early and leave the track meet because it’s just not convenient or easy for the elderly to walk down a gravel road in the rain and mud to try and use a porta-potty,” Bradley said. “Same thing goes for my mother-in-law, so that was a bummer.”
Bradley said it was hard enough to get the stadium built since it relied on donations, so she wanted to do her part.
“For whatever reason, we can’t seem to get athletics as a priority (in La Center), so we have to do it a different way,” Bradley said.
The La Center Boosters Club was dormant during much of the COVID-19 pandemic, but has since started back up which allowed the fundraiser to go forward.
“There were a lot of roadblocks to figure out how to do this,” she said. “I couldn’t do it with the ASB (Associated Student Body) because all the money had to be used within the school year and there were challenges to working within the student structure, so I had to do it with the Boosters, but the Boosters cannot be affiliated with the school district at all, so I had to get 18 volunteers to stand in front of the schools and hand out ticket packets to kids.”
She said the school was very supportive of the efforts, but could not help directly so they allowed the volunteers to sell ticket packets outside of the school on their own time. Bradley said she attempted to sell the raffle tickets online, but wasn’t able to because Washington is one of five states that are only allowed to sell the tickets in person.
At the fundraiser event, a helicopter dropped balls onto the Tri-Mountain Golf Course in Ridgefield. The balls were filled with raffle numbers and about 70 people attended the event.
“We ended up more or less just having a community party,” Bradley said. “We did the biggest balls raffle that day, for people who bought over 20 tickets and qualified for a special $500 cash gift card raffle. It was not a gimmick. It was actually interesting.”
She said the success of the event will allow them to coordinate more fundraisers in the future.
“I think everybody who bought tickets deserves a huge thank you,” Bradley said.
The total cost for the bathrooms, including materials and labor, is estimated to be about $50,000 if a construction company is hired.
“What’s key is to find the labor that we need donated,” Bradley said. “The state requires that the school district pay a prevailing wage if they hire somebody. They can accept free (labor) but what they can’t accept is ‘in-between,’ meaning reduced pay.”
She said a number of people are willing to volunteer their services for construction, but the La Center Education Foundation must also send someone to oversee the volunteers to ensure their safety, which is something that is currently being discussed. Bradley said many construction workers work six days a week, so they are doing what they can to find people who have the time to provide services for the bathrooms.
If all of the conditions are met, Bradley said construction on the bathrooms is supposed to start this summer.
