For three busy weeks in September 2008, construction of two volleyball courts commenced. First the City workers brought in MANY tons of fill dirt and built a large flat dirt bowl. Two weeks later, the City was done, but the SE corner was quite wet due to water coming out of the hillside and up from the ground. Good court drainage was going to be important.
Next, a herring bone system of drain pipe was added in trenches (sorry, no photos), but before the 8" layer of gravel could be spread, a work party that lasted past midnight was needed to get the holes dug for the net standards.
Then Bill Winchester of Wauna Tractor Services groomed the dirt edges and spread the layer of gravel before the entire court area was covered by commercial drain fabric. Finally, the 18-24" of high quality sand from Lloyd Enterprises in Milton was spread on top of that.
After the net standards were precisely concreted in place, we decided that guy wires should be installed to keep the nets taut forever...
As soon as the courts were in playing shape, work progress slowed as everyone just wanted to get playing. Here's the final point of the first game played on the new courts, unfortunately for Chris and George it's an overset that Dave flushes...
The courts were temporarily turned into a crime scene until some padding was purchased and installed on the net standards.
But towels and duct tape were a good stop-gap solution
With the borders unfinished, the gang pressed to get some treated logs in place to separate sand from dirt
...but these were removed by the City because they didn't meet standards. Perhaps people might be tempted to eat off of them?
Meanwhile the City added a nice fence on the west and north sides of the courts. The northwest corner, however, fell prey to loose dirt and gravity as the rainy season arrived. But they shored up the posts with some concrete, and all was fine.
On the south end of the courts, however, it was still quite wet.
But play continued through the Fall, Winter, and Spring with at least one session of play each week. Here are the first annual New Years Day Invitational participants...
With the arrival of Summer, more and more folks showed up to play. On one day we counted over 50 people over a 3 hour time period...a dilemna for those who wanted to play doubles. During the Summer, Gregg hosted a Thursday night coed quad league (won by Renae, George, Dave, and Gregg!), Dave hosted the 26th annual end of summer doubles volleyball tournament using both the sand courts and nearby baseball field for grass. Alan won the men's and Kim won the women's this year, with Dave and Renae taking second place, respectively. Mike ran an invitational a couple weeks later. Slade won, with twin brother Sy coming in second.
With all the success and fun, the courts still had problems. Most notably, we needed to form a better border around the court to separate sand from dirt. The east hillside was especially problematic, so the idea of a concrete wall/border was conceived. You can see the problem here in the background behind Scott's spike.
Also, balls flying out of the courts to the west and north were difficult to retrieve, so we decided to install tall netting along the length of the fence. Finally, we wanted to extend the sand surface to the fences.
Adding a wall along a wet hillside means you must provide drainage, so we had to dig for a spot to tie into the existing drainage.
The concrete wall was a huge job as we experienced some of the worst 3 days of rain on record, which caused problems along the steep hillside, but in the end Ron Miller and son Matthew of Universe Construction prevailed.
At the same time, deep holes for the netting poles were dug and filled with concrete.
The next Friday, Bill Winchester returned to fill gravel on top of drain pipes behind the walls, add sand on top for a sitting area, and refresh the playing area with more sand.
The next day, we installed the crossbars and netting, re-installed the court nets, and everyone was ready to start playing again.
After discovering some additional drainage issues near the entrance, one final work party was needed to solve that.
And the gang was back playin again!!
