Sports

New scoreboard among additions at BCA

By Tyler Ohmann

12/10/2013

Patrons of the Bottineau Community Arena (BCA) may have noticed a few changes as they stepped into the rink recently.

That’s because the Bottineau Park Board, which runs the BCA made several key improvements over the summer.

BCA added a new LED scoreboard, widened the player entrance on the west side of the rink, completely rebuilt the player boxes and painted about 60 percent of the arena.

Perhaps the biggest change was the new scoreboard, which now includes a timing clock that can run either simultaneously or separately of the main scoreboard on the north wall.

“We felt that this would be one upgrade that this was time for,” said Brian Knudson, manager of BCA. “All the hockey teams were in favor of it.”

The old scoreboard was installed into BCA in 1977, and was still fully functional, but dependability concerns and the cost of maintenance and electricity costs were a concern.

The new scoreboard, which cost about $12,000 plus the cost of installation is made by the same manufacturer as the old one.

The board looked at two options to raise the funds, either raise ice rates, or go to it’s biggest users and ask for them to chip in.

They chose the latter option and asked Dakota College at Bottineau, Bottineau High School and the youth Blue Line program to kick in a share.

“We went and asked all the users, ‘hey, chip in $3,000 for this,’” Knudson said.

They all approved it, and the new scoreboard was in place. DCB, BHS and Blue Line each chipped in their $3,000 and the park board covered the rest, which included the final $3,000 plus installation costs.

The board itself is from the same company that made the old one and runs very similarly. They did run a bid from another company, but they came in higher.

The timer clock that can run either separately or consecutively for youth cross-ice games.  The new timer clock on the south wall can also be utilized by coaches for drills and such via a remote.

Other improvements other than the LED lights, which shine brighter and are easier to see, include the clock can run into the tenths of a second and is easier to add and remove penalties.

Thus far, everyone involved in the clock’s running as well as game-goers have had a positive response.

“Everybody has been giving really positive remarks about the clock, and the people that operate it really like it,” Knudson said. “From the ice it is clear and easy to read, and we had bulbs that were continuously burning out, and we’d replace them, but you could replace three bulbs and turn it on the next day and there would be two more bulbs out again.”

“The savings on electricity will be great too,” Knudson added.

BCA also rebuilt the player boxes, installed all new flooring, and perhaps most noticeably put an entrance from behind the box.

BCA will also be opening their outdoor rinks soon. They began setting them up last week, and hope to finish by this Friday.