New Brighton Area Schools State Champion Signs Grace City Entrances

Every single Brighton Area Schools championship team is finally being recognized on new, recently installed signs located in five different entrances to the City of Brighton.

"We've been fortunate to have young people go out and represent us in terms of our athletic teams at the school and bring home state championships," Brighton Athletic Director John Thompson said. "Through the course of the years, there just hasn't really been a mechanism to recognize the history and totality due to limitations on sign space. We were looking for an idea to recognize that history from the first one through not only the last one, but for ones that will come as well."

Thompson said the district teamed up with the City of Brighton and Piet Lindhout, owner of Lindhout & Associates for the project.

Lindhout designed the signs.

"I love helping out the schools and the city whenever I can, so this was an easy one," Lindhout said. "I also appreciate a nicely designed sign versus one without character and I wanted to make sure it had nice character to it - a little preference for doing it right. Not that the DPS guys aren't great sign designers - sometimes they're more utilitarian in appearance."

Brighton Department of Public Services Director Matt Schindewolf said the approval process for the signs only took about two weeks.

"It was a project that was looked at and was decided it was definitely something we should do," Schindewolf added. "We want to show pride in the school district and all the kids who have gone through the Brighton school system."

The total cost for the the signs was $7,895, $1,900 of of which was paid for by the City of Brighton. The balance of the cost was paid for by the school via fundraising and donations, according to Thompson.

"One of the other motivating factors in putting these up was that under the previous situation when we added a sign, we had to take the oldest one down and the cost of each instance was $1,400," Thompson said. "So in the long run, this project aside from being able to in a classy manor reflect the proud history of Brighton also is a long term cost savings move too."

The signs are located on Rickett Road, Brighton Road, on both ends of Grand River Avenue and on Spencer Rd/Main Street across from Sloan Soccer Field.

Lindhout added that in addition to installing the five new signs, they removed about three or four old ones in order to keep it clean and neat.

The signs currently list Girls and Boys Cross Country, Equestrian, Softball, Girls Lacrosse, Boys Gymnastics, Rugby and Hockey Championship teams.

The layout of the sign leaves room to add new years to the teams represented as well as add additional teams if they should win a state championship.

"We set the bar high here, there's room for at least four more teams," Lindhout said.

"We're throwing down the challenge," Thompson added.