Friday Night Lights

Folks attending night games at Mickey Clark Field will soon have a brighter view of the events.

Workers are installing new lights and poles around the Coupeville School District athletic field. Four new light poles with five lights apiece are being installed around the field.

Gary Smart, maintenance supervisor for the Coupeville School District, said the new poles use a quarter the number of lights as the old poles. He added the new lights are facing downward, which is something neighbors will appreciate.

Smart said the new lights also use a third of the energy of the old lights.

Bill Myhr, superintendent of the Coupeville School District, said the new, shorter poles will improve the visual landscape of Ebey’s Landing National Historic Reserve. The metal poles are 75 feet tall — 20 feet shorter than the old telephone style poles.

“We think it’s a win win for everybody,” Myhr said.

Myhr said the old lights, which he said originally illuminated chicken coops, were in bad shape and only 50 percent of them worked.

He said the new lights were needed because more people use the field now that the school district has a soccer program.

Smart added that it would have cost just as much to fix the old lights as to install new ones.

Workers from Coupeville’s CK Electric Service were hired to install the lights and poles. They were busy installing them this week.

The project cost the Coupeville School District approximately $29,000 and the money comes from the district’s capital projects fund.

Smart said he hopes workers will finish installing the new lights by Thursday. That is in time for the first Coupeville High School football game, scheduled for Sept. 2 against Blaine.

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