The Greene County School District is looking to give a structure back to the City of Rippey.

The Greene County School Board recently approved a decision to give the Wisecup Memorial Gym over to the City of Rippey. In 2015, the School Board sold the entire property to the City of Rippey for $1. The three-story school building was torn down in 2014, leaving only the gymnasium as the lone structure on the property. Superintendent Tim Christensen says since then, the District and the City have had an agreement in place that the District would continue to use the gym for lower-level competitions and maintain the property and building. Christensen explains the reasons why the Board decided not to continue to use the gym.

“Junior high athletics is going to a split season. So that means junior high boys wrestling would be before Christmas and then basketball after Christmas. For the girls, it would be basketball before Christmas and no basketball afterwards. That effectively eliminates two practices per day that we need to have and also it eliminates games. With that, we no longer need to use the Rippey facility.”

It was costing the District $11,000 annually to maintain the facility and property, and the gym was only used 12 to 14 times per year for athletic competitions.