After 10 years with the same look, Warsaw Community High School’s Tiger Den may soon be receiving a more modern makeover.

According to WCHS Athletic Director Dave Anson, the implementation of a new court design that features tiger claw marks through the center of the stadium as well as new phrases and logo options may occur this summer.

The plans for the new look all began when Anson mentioned to Pay Pro Media President Matt Hoskins that the gym floor would soon be undergoing changes and would be stripped down to wood for the 10-year routine maintenance. Anson said Hoskins interest was immediately piqued in helping to improve the gym floor design.

“First of all I want to give a very big thank you Matt Hoskins at Pay Pro Media,” started Anson in his address to the school board during a work session Tuesday. “We were sitting down in January or February and I mentioned to Matt that this is the year we do routine maintenance on our basketball court and it goes down to wood. I saw a little bit of gleam in his eye. Matt is very creative person and he’s been really helpful to us. He did a tremendous job [helping to come up with ideas for the new court].”

According to Anson, though the gym floor undergoes annual maintenance, every 10 years the floor is stripped down to its wood level and is repainted. For the past 10 years the gym floor has had two tigers painted on it with various logos such as the NLC logo.

Due to the intricate detailing that has been done in painting the tigers in the past, Anson stated that the quotes received for keeping the gym floor as is were significantly higher than the quotes received for the new basketball court ideas.

Although the gym floors will be losing the two tigers currently painted on the flooring, the new plans are anything but plain. According to Anson, coaches at WCHS have considered over 30 different design ideas presented by Pay Pro Media, finally narrowing down the selection to four favorite designs.

From there, coaches took many of their faithful Tiger Den fans and even past and current players opinions into perspective on which of the four plans best represented the school. The new plans featured a tiger claw mark through the center of the court along with various logo, phrasing and font options that could be incorporated.

“We’re preparing a surface not just for basketball, volleyball, wrestling and gym classes,” said Anson. “Were preparing our living room carpet basically. And this is going to be looked at by tens  of thousands of people. This is our Parade of Homes so to speak. So it is important and there has been a lot of thought put into this.”

Anson, who received the school board’s nod for his work and dedication in the process, will soon be meeting with WCHS Principal Troy Akers and fellow coaches to determine a final selection for the new court floor. The painting of the gym floor is scheduled to begin the last week of June and will take approximately three weeks to finish.