HARVEY – Seven Helen Cox football players surrounded a bench, set up amidst a few lockers recently.

Only one teenager was lifting at this moment, but should a need have arisen for other students to change for a PE class, little room would have been left for the players to finish their training cycle.

In a few months, this scene will be but a memory. Helen Cox and the Jefferson Parish school system are set to complete a new fieldhouse at the former junior high by Aug. 1.

All Photos by Bradley Handwerger / WWL-TV.com

Cox players lift weights in the only space they have to lift. However, in a few months, the school will get a new building to move the football and ROTC programs into.

And then, only then, will Willie Brooks breathe a sigh of relief.

For three years now, the Cougars have been playing high school sports using junior high facilities. With nearly 80 football players alone, Brooks, the head football coach, found it hard to get anything accomplished.

“It’s a need. We’ve outgrown this facility here that was designed, really, for a middle school and a junior high,” Brooks said. “It’s a necessity.”

“They were using a small junior high and middle school PE area for football,” Jefferson Parish athletics director Manny Barocco said. “Obviously, they’ve done a fine job developing their football program. They needed to be treated as first class, which is what they are.”

The new fieldhouse always has been on the drawing board since parish leaders decided Cox needed to become a high school. But because of several factors, including the cost and Hurricane Katrina, it’s just now getting built.

East Jefferson and West Jefferson also are getting new fieldhouses as part of a plan to bring Yenni and Hoss Memtsas stadiums into the 21st Century.

On Cox’s campus off of Lapalco Blvd., the school is getting a nearly $1.6 million building that will house not only athletics, but also the ROTC program. It’s expected to be about 8,600 square feet. Lamar Contractors, Inc., out of Kenner is building it and New Orleans’ Bonie Associates was the architectural firm.

The slab of Cox's new fieldhouse has been poured. The football program is expected to move in by Aug. 1 barring any delays.

Work already is under way. The slab already has been laid, and Brooks said the students get excited daily when dump trucks and concrete pouring trucks make their trek onto campus.

They’re not the only ones excited.

“Thank goodness when these things start rolling,” Barocco said. “You start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Nevertheless, as spring football gets underway and with Brooks’ Cougars coming off a second-round playoff berth a year after getting to the first round, the old facilities will have to do.

“It has been really tough,” junior linebacker Marvis Osirio said. “The workouts have to be separate. You have to wait and wait. Coach gets mad when you’re standing around looking for something to do.”

A moment late in the 2007 season highlighted the school’s need for something more, Brooks said.

“We had so many kids we started doing what we called the Herschel Walker workout,” Brooks said. “We started doing pushups. We had so many kids in such limited space and we needed to get stronger, we needed to maintain our strength, so we really started doing pushups and sit-ups and those things because we didn’t have the machinery to do the things we needed to do.”

“I thought at the end when we played Vandebilt and the teams of that caliber, where they have facilities already in place, it gave them an added edge in terms of strength. It showed in the course of the game.”

Junior receiver Javone Lawson agreed.

“Every time we get to the playoffs, we face teams bigger than us and we need strength and energy,” he said.