By DREW GRANTHUM / Sports Writer

The Calera Eagles Booster Club held a parent work day Aug. 17 as a way of helping improve Ricky Cairns Stadium.

The event, which was started by Calera High principal Richard Bishop and the new booster club, took place before the varsity fall scrimmage game.

“We had talked about it,” Bishop said. “We actually are working on a reserved seat section. We said ‘Well, if we’re going to do that, let’s clean the bleachers up.’”

Bishop said the booster club helped the city clean the stadium in order to provide the reserved seats, which will be available to booster club parents during the season.

“I talked to the parks and rec manager, and he said ‘We have so many things going on, it would be good if you could help us out,’” Bishop said. “So we organized our football dads and moms to do some clean up work.”

The main focus of the clean up was to remove trash from the stands, pressure wash the home bleachers and touch up the handrails, Bishop said.

“Our boys work really hard, and we’re very proud of the facilities we have,” he said. “We’re a shared facility, the city owns the park,” he said. “They do so much for us. They provide the lighting, they do all the grass cutting, so it’s sort of a way for us to tell them how much we appreciate them too and show some pride.”

Booster club member Norman Buckhannon said it was a chance for the new club to reach out to the community.

“We’re trying to get more parents involved,” he said. “We have a lot of parents that want to bring kids (to the game) and drop them off. We want those parents to actually come in the gates themselves and watch the game with their kids.”

Buckhannon said the booster club wanted the growth of the community support to match the growth of the city.

“We’d like to keep growing,” he said. “We’re just trying to make the vibe better for everybody, and make everybody see this is a family thing. We’re trying to get everybody involved.”