NATCHITOCHES – Northwestern State student-athletes and coaches spent time last week helping enhance one of the university's most iconic structures.
 
Among those participating were Demon basketball players Devonte Hall, Matt Killian, Reginald Kissoonlal, Malik Metoyer and Sabri Thompson, along with assistant coach Luke Rogers, and assistant women's tennis coach Patric DuBois.
 
It was another example of the community service efforts by NSU Athletics. Student-athletes and athletic staff have contributed an average of more than 5,000 hours of community service annually for the past three years.
 
Last month, NSU won the first Southland Strong Community Service Award presented to the Southland Conference member whose student-athletes compile the most service hours during the previous year.
 
NSU's student-athletes had over 900 hours more than their peers at the second-place conference institution.
 
They were among volunteers who worked together last week to clean, inventory and relocate the contents of the historic Nichols Schoolhouse, which resides on a hill near the Teacher Education Center on Tarlton Drive. The project was the first phase of renovating the structure. 
 
"We completed part one of a multiphase project that involved the efforts of several of our student-athletes, coaches, staff and administrators," said Steven Gruesbeck, director of Service-Learning at NSU.
 
The one-room schoolhouse has ties to the Cane River area and to the university, which was founded as the state's designated institute for the training of teachers in 1884. The schoolhouse was originally the Nichols School, established in southern Natchitoches Parish in 1906. The school was named for Benjamin Franklin Nichols who donated the land on which the building was constructed.
 
The schoolhouse was in use until 1924 when elementary students were transferred to Cloutierville. For more than 50 years, the building was used as a home. In 1981, the schoolhouse was donated to Northwestern State and was moved to the grounds of the Teacher Education Center in 2000.
 
The Nichols school was built using cypress with cypress shingles and a wood shake roof. A wood shake is a shingle that is smooth on one side and split, or rigid, on the other.
 
Administrators said the structure has a powerful legacy that represents a place where graduates of the state Normal School, which later became Northwestern State University, did outstanding work in educating children in rudimentary facilities in rural areas.
 
The schoolhouse contents will be stored in the nearby Health and Human Performance Building until the renovation is complete.
 

• Primary content for this story reported by Leah Jackson, NSU News Bureau

 
Photo ID:
(From left) Matt Killian, Devonte Hall (behind bench), Reginald Kissoonlal, Malik Metoyer, Assistant Basketball Coach Luke Rogers