WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2020
HermistonHerald.com
EasternOregonMarketplace.com
NEED FOR
SPEED
New Hermiston gym off ers
‘speed school’ for athletes
By NADA SEWIDAN
STAFF WRITER
W
hen the Hermis-
ton Athletic Club
opens, it will be the
fi rst gym in Ore-
gon to have a Parisi
speed school, according to its
manager.
The gym, set to open Monday,
July 27, boasts the regular ameni-
ties of an athletic club, with added
extras, such as the Parisi speed
school, a program designed to help
athletes improve their speed and
endurance.
“There isn’t something like this
clear to California,” Roger Adams,
manager at the athletic club, said.
“And Hermiston, Oregon, is going
to have that.”
According to Adams, the Parisi
school trains professional athletes.
He said the school has trained pro-
fessional basketball players, NFL
players, college football players
and other high-level athletes.
At the Parisi speed room, peo-
ple will be able to do resistance
training, side shuffl es, sprints and
backpedals, among other training
and conditioning. They also have
a vertical tester and a full assess-
ment program that they run ath-
letes through.
“We’re excited about having
this here,” he said. “We have peo-
ple from as far as the Tri-Cities and
Yakima talking about coming out.”
Adams said the gym overall
has some great tools to help create
great athletes that want to take it to
the next step.
“Hopefully, we’ll see athletes
break through to that Division I
level,” he said.
The Hermiston Athletic Club
sits on the site of the former
“THERE ISN’T
SOMETHING LIKE
THIS CLEAR TO
CALIFORNIA.
AND HERMIS-
TON, OREGON, IS
GOING TO HAVE
THAT.”
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
Staff hang a large graphic on the wall of the main workout space at the new Hermiston Athletic Club on Highway
395 in Hermiston. The club will open on Monday, July 27, 2020.
Roger Adams, manager of the
new Hermiston Athletic Club
Columbia Court Club, which was
gutted by a fi re in 2016. The own-
ers of that gym originally planned
to reopen, but after two years of
arguing with their insurance com-
pany, owner Steve Watkinds even-
tually told the Hermiston Herald
he had decided to sell.
The new owners then experi-
enced delays of their own during
the process of extensively remod-
eling the damaged building.
COVID-19 has also posed some
challenges for the facility, includ-
ing delaying their opening and
causing the club to modify some
plans in terms of social distancing.
This means all contact sports will
have to be postponed until it is safe
to resume.
“We still have to follow social
distancing,” Adams said. “We need
to be safe, so that means no con-
tact sports for right now. We want
to train, but we want to do it as
safely as possible until we all get
through the tough times we’re in
right now.”
He said they are following the
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan
See Gym, Page A8
Free weights sit on racks awaiting use at the new Hermiston Athletic Club on Highway 395 in Hermiston. The club
will open on Monday, July 27, 2020.
Umatilla forges ahead on back-to-school plans
By JADE MCDOWELL
NEWS EDITOR
As Umatilla School District
plans its socially distanced return
to school, Superintendent Heidi
Sipe is also working to help stu-
dents return to the classroom
statewide.
Sipe is serving on the newly
formed Healthy Schools Reopen-
ing Council, made up of edu-
cators, students, public health
experts and legislators from
around the state. The council
gives feedback to the Oregon
Department of Education on pro-
posed rules for reopening schools
and works on problem-solving
for the challenges presented by
social distancing restrictions.
One of the topics they tack-
led at their most recent meeting
was what metrics they can pro-
vide districts to help them make
decisions about when they should
temporarily move to online-only
in the event of an outbreak.
“There has been a pretty clear
and consistent emphasis in recog-
nizing that a statewide approach
would be very challenging,” Sipe
said. “What Helix or Echo can do,
with the size of their classes, is
very different than what I can do,
or Hermiston or Pendleton.”
Each district also has differ-
ent demographics. In Umatilla
INSIDE
Staff photo by Ben Lonergan, File
Graduates parade through Umatilla following Umatilla High School’s commencement ceremony on June 4, 2020.
The school district is now making plans for returning students to in-person classrooms in the fall.
School District, nearly three-
fourths of the students are Latino,
more than half are English Lan-
guage Learners, and more than
95% qualify for free or reduced
lunch based on their family’s low
income.
In a statement about the
Healthy Schools Reopening
A2 Church off ers Vacation Bible
School to go
Council, Gov. Kate Brown said as
most districts switch to a hybrid
model of in-person and online
learning, one of the council’s
tasks will be to fi nd ways to make
sure that model works for every
single student.
“I am pushing school offi cials
to make sure underserved and
A3 Umatilla County Fair plans for
unusual fair week
marginalized students — our kids
of color and our low-income kids
— get the support and opportuni-
ties they need. We cannot allow
our response to this pandemic to
increase racial disparities in edu-
cational outcomes,” Brown said.
While each district faces its
own unique set of circumstances,
A3 Door-to-door COVID-19
testing coming to Hermiston
Sipe said there are some common
themes that all districts in the
state are grappling with. One, for
example, is the safety of teachers
who fall into categories that put
them at higher risk from COVID-
19 than most of their students.
“The complexity of that chal-
lenge is present in every conver-
sation,” she said.
Sipe said locally, she has
been having discussions with
staff who, due to age or underly-
ing health conditions, have seri-
ous concerns about returning to
school while COVID-19 is still
active in the community. She said
she is having discussions with
the unions about how to handle
leaves of absence and other issues
surrounding that discussion.
Hermiston School District
hasn’t released concrete details
about its plans for next year, but
Superintendent Tricia Mooney
said during a recent city coun-
cil meeting that it will likely be
a hybrid model of online and
in-person learning, with in-per-
son contact prioritized for the
younger grades that have more
diffi culty learning online.
Umatilla School District plans
Umatilla School District has
ordered Umatilla Vikings buffs for
See School, Page A8
A7 Hermiston residents continue
to wait for unemployment benefi ts