By DIANE GASPER-O’BRIEN
Special to Hays Post
Thomas More Prep-Marian will celebrate the 75th anniversary of Al Billinger Fieldhouse in 2026.
The Hays Catholic junior-senior high school received an early anniversary gift last week.
Technicians from Insane Impact—a company out of Des Moines, Iowa, that installs premier LED displays—were in Hays installing a new scoreboard and video board in the historic building.
Thanks to the generosity of Sunrise AgriBusiness Solutions of Hays, fans will be able to enjoy a luxury not afforded many schools the size of TMP.
A 6-by-8-foot digital scoreboard now hangs from the ceiling of the southeast corner of the fieldhouse, directly across the court from a large video board that stretches almost 12 feet wide in the northwest corner.
See a video of the old scoreboard coming down.
TMP-M Athletic Director James Harris thinks the new additions will have a huge impact for many.
"We have a great home-court advantage because of the unique building and the atmosphere with our outstanding band and amazing student support," Harris said of the "pit." "This is going to be another way to take pride in our school, give support to our advertisers and get the community more involved."
Sunrise founder and CEO Travis Brunner said the $50,000 donation is part of his vow to provide a service that isn’t available in western Kansas.
“TMP hosts a lot of the communities that Sunrise serves,” said Brunner, whose company does business in eight states with Hays as its headquarters.
“The old scoreboards in the fieldhouse were absolutely outdated,” added Brunner, who has three children attending TMP, “and this is an opportunity to not only update those but to feature a lot of those other communities, too.”
The video board will be able to show videos and advertisements and the score and time of games simultaneously.
“This will give us the chance to recognize students more frequently and dynamically,” said Chad Meitner, TMP principal. “We are really excited about this and are so grateful to Sunrise for their donation.”
Meitner said TMP-M chose Insane Impact because of its reputation, and he wasn’t disappointed.
Masters of improvisation
The company usually takes at least a week to install the boards, so technicians faced the challenge of completing the job in a shortened workweek because of Memorial Day.
They also learned early on this would be no ordinary installation because of the unique setting in the fieldhouse.
The technicians said they usually install the digital boards on walls or on steel beams above unfinished ceilings. Since the fieldhouse's ceiling is finished, the boards were raised to the ceiling and hung from support beams above.
The basketball court in the fieldhouse, built in 1951, is surrounded by a cement wall, forming a pit with cement bleachers above.
The installers were pleased when they learned that TMP owned a Genie scissors lift, saving them a lot of time building scaffolding.
Nonetheless, they still made several trips around town to purchase ropes, wenches and even washers that did not come with the shipped product.
“You just never know what issue we might run into,” said Derek Cunningham, assistant project manager for Insane Impact. “So, yeah, I’d say improvising is something we do all the time.”
The video board was shipped in two large crates, and the technicians built it on-site.
Following two full days of pulling and lifting, assembling and discussing —and improvising—Cunningham gave Meitner a crash course on the use of the boards Friday morning before his return trip back to Iowa.
Cunningham said the company would send TMP-M a necessary adapter for the boards, and an Insane Impact technician plans to visit the school this summer.
Meitner said he and other school personnel will make tweaks throughout the summer so that the video board and scoreboard are fully operational at the start of school in August.
More student involvement
TMP plans to form a student media team to operate the board during games and create content.
“Students are very good at media development these days,” Harris said. “They will be able to have an ownership in this and take pride in their work. This will give us a platform to recognize a lot of organizations and accomplishments.”
Meitner agreed.
“We will be able to recognize students and teams and groups more frequently and dynamically,” he said. “On the learning side of it, (Advancement Director) Mason Ruder will work with students on how to display advertising. This is going to be such a win-win situation for all involved.”
Change is part of history
The two new boards replace scoreboards that TMP administrators believe were installed in the 1990s. Those had replaced a four-sided board in the middle of the court that most agree hung “way too low.”
Alan Billinger is a former girls’ basketball and softball coach at TMP and the son of the legendary coach for whom the building is named.
A graduate of St. Joseph Military Academy, TMP’s predecessor, Alan Billinger has either played or coached in games in the fieldhouse from the late 1950s until his retirement from coaching in 2012. He even remembers going to practice with his dad long before he donned a St. Joseph Cadets uniform.
“That’s quite the building, and it’s great to see upgrades on it,” Billinger said. “What a tremendous donation from Sunrise and Travis Brunner. For someone to come up with that idea itself is amazing. It shows the kind of support the community has for TMP-Marian.”