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A team with bench strength Photo by Jim Craven Jered McLain, a 17-year-old North Medford High School student, cuts stock metal to be used in constructing team benches for the Rogue Valley Cup soccer tournament. North Medford class shows true mettle in construction project By DAVID PRESZLER Building a few metal benches may not seem like a complex engineering project. It didn't sound too tough to Joe Kelly and Sarah Lautenschleger, either. But, as the two North Medford High School juniors and their metal shop classmates found out, manufacturing 32 benches efficiently and quickly isn't so simple. "It was a little more involved," says Kelly. "There was a lot more to it then we thought." "I never thought about how a bench was put together, until I had to put one together," says Lautenschleger. With help from Medford Fabrication, the two students are heading up a metal shop class project to build 32 team benches for the annual Rogue Valley Cup soccer tournament. The dozen or so students involved in the project are racing to finish in time for the Memorial Day weekend event. Along the way, Medford Fabrication officials and shop teacher Mike Ayers say they are getting valuable hands-on experience. The Medford company not only donated the materials -- the bench tops were left over from another project -- but has worked directly with the students. Four students spent two days at Medford Fabrication working with one of the company's engineers to design the benches. "We tried to keep the design simple enough so they could fabricate it themselves," says Richard Walch, the company's engineering manager. The students and the engineer worked through the process, from using the computer design program to putting the design through stress tests. Walch says some of the steps were "total overkill" but helped the students understand more about how companies like Medford Fabrication design and build projects. To actually build the benches, the students returned to the campus shop to learn a bit about mass production, making all the parts before assembling the 7-foot, 5-inch long benches. Medford Fabrication cut the bench tops but the rest of the cutting, welding, assembling and painting is being done by students. "We came back here and basically formed a company," says Ayers. "We set this up in a mass production fashion. We're trying to build about 10 at a time." Medford Fabrication bought a new band saw for the shop and has offered more help if the students run short of time. About a half dozen benches were done as of Thursday morning but many parts are ready to be assembled. "Once everything is cut out it only takes a day or two to get everything put together," says Kelly. "We only have 80 minutes every other day to do this." Ayers and Walch say partnerships between education and the manufacturing industry are essential in light of the cuts many school districts have made to industrial arts programs. "A lot of public schools are cutting and de-emphasizing manufacturing," says Walch. "It's getting very difficult for us to find employees." "We couldn't run the (metal shop) program without Medford Fabrication and others," says Ayers, noting that area companies regularly donate materials to be used in the shop. The project also fills a need for the Rogue Valley Cup, which is expected to draw 3,000 players on 140 teams from five states. "Every year we try to add to it," says Buzz Thielemann, one of the tournament's organizers. "We don't have any place for people to sit. This fills a tremendous need." Cup organizers initially looked at buying the 32 benches (enough for players and coaches at the 16 fields the tournament uses). But the cost -- about $150 a bench -- was too steep. Thielemann and Medford Fabrication President Bill Thorndike Jr. were chatting at a meeting about the benches when Thorndike offered to help. Walch says the company does 20 to 30 donation projects a year. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA