Boy Scout repairs middle school playground

Thanks to Bridger Smith, students returning to Whitefish Middle School this week will be treated to a new and improved playground area.

Smith, a sophomore at Whitefish High School, recently completed his service project to attain the rank of Eagle Scout. As part of the project, Smith re-set the green picnic tables on the playground, fixed up metal bars on the jungle gym and pull up bars, set up emergency evacuation signs along the fences and fixed up some of the basketball hoops with new paint and nets.

“To get to the rank of Eagle Scout you have to complete a service project that benefits a school, religious institution or the community. I feel like this does two of those,” he said.

Smith spent the last three weeks working on the playground with family and friends, he said, averaging about 10 hours per workday.

The picnic tables, which have shifted away from their original placement through the years, sparked the idea for the project, Smith said.

“We would sit at these tables and my feet wouldn’t touch the ground as an eighth grader,” he said. “We have fifth through eighth graders at this school, so I couldn’t even imagine it for a fifth grader. These benches were too far back and too high.”

Each table leg weighed about 400 pounds, Smith said, making the task of moving and fixing them a little complicated.

Middle school principal Josh Bransetter said it’s interesting to note the tables themselves started off as a community project done by the middle school’s student council.

“Our student council went through and did some Youth in Philanthropy fundraising and raised some funds, about four to six years ago, to purchase the tables on the playground. Through the course of nature, they’ve become moved and unusable, you sit at them and your feet barely touch the ground, and there’s also some things on the playground that need attention,” Bransetter said. “Bridger recognized those and has contacted myself and the school to see if he can go ahead and use those hours for a community service project.”

To get started, Smith had to submit his proposal and get the project approved by his Boy Scout troop council before bringing it in front of the Whitefish School Board.

Smith received a unanimous approval from the board.

“I just want to say, I’m really proud of Bridger,” Trustee Katie Clarke said at the Aug. 8 meeting. “Thank you for doing this.”

Smith said while the project was a lot of work, the contentment that comes with a job well done is the best part of it.

“It was just kind of fun to do overall,” he said. “The final feeling of the satisfaction that the middle schoolers can actually use this part of the playground, the whole playground really. That’s probably the most fun part of it.

There’s more work to be done outside the middle school, he said. Smith mentioned that Bransetter had talked of eventually building a walking path that circles the school grounds.

Save that, however, for someone else, Smith said.

“That will be another scout’s project,” he laughed.