Coppell Chronicle Vol. 3, No. 37
Coppell Champions Silo Receives Makeover • New Set of Wayfinding Signs on Their Way • Winter Averaging Has Begun Again • Coppell ISD Student Body Expected to Shrink
As a lifelong Texas Rangers fan, I’m still in a euphoric state thanks to their first World Series championship. Speaking of states and championships …
Coppell Champions Silo Receives Makeover
The championships silo in Old Town Coppell received a refresh and a few updates this weekend, thanks to the persistence of one tough grandma.
“Know somebody who knows somebody,” Misty Salvie said, “and they’ll get you what you need.”
Salvie has two grandsons who are lacrosse players. The older one, who graduated from Coppell High School last spring, played the sport for 12 years. His little brother is still involved in the Coppell lacrosse program as a middle schooler.
A few months ago, Salvie began wondering why the Coppell boys lacrosse team’s state titles from 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2021 weren’t marked on the silo, which lists nine Coppell High School championships ranging from baseball in 1995 to boys soccer in 2016. As I learned two years ago when reporting the article linked below, Salvie discovered that the silo is controlled by the Main Street Coppell Property Owners Association.
(See “The Mark of a Championship” in Vol. 1, No. 17.)
She eventually made contact with Shawn Hester, who has been the property owners association’s president since the spring of 2022. Hester said his group was fine with updating the silo’s listings, as well as refreshing the paint that was in place long before the association became responsible for the silo. However, the property owners didn’t necessarily want to foot the bill.
So Salvie began tracking down the booster clubs for all of the programs that have won state titles. A plan was formulated for those clubs to split the costs of the work, which is being done by David Bearden, an art teacher at Coppell High School. Bearden spent most of Saturday refreshing the old paint. He was supposed to add the four lacrosse titles today, as well as the girls cross country team’s championship from 2018.
Melia Mitchell, president of the baseball booster club, stopped by with a check for Bearden on Saturday as Salvie and I watched him work.
“We come here to Local Diner all the time,” Mitchell said. “I thought, well, that will be great to see.”
When Salvie told me Bearden was going to denote a cross country championship from 2018, I thought that might be a mistake. When reporting my 2021 article about the silo, I took a picture of one of the championships signs at Coppell’s city limits that indicate the cross country title happened during the 2017-2018 school year.
Because cross country is a fall sport, I said to Salvie, shouldn’t the year on the silo be 2017? She whipped out her phone and found a Coppell Student Media article that confirms the Cowgirls ran their way to a state championship in 2018.
Salvie was not aware of my previous silo article when she began her efforts. I told her I reported that Coppell’s hockey team — which, like lacrosse, is not a UIL-sanctioned sport — might want to be included on the silo for titles won in 2003, 2020, and 2021, but she said nobody mentioned hockey to her as she tried to figure out which championships were missing.
“They need to contact all the same people I did,” she said, “because this was a chore.”
Well, with the way Coppell High School’s football season is going (read more in the Chronicle Crumbs), there might soon be an opportunity to further update the silo and also correct the mistake on the signs at the city limits.
“I think we’re going to be adding football,” Mitchell said. “They are killing it.”
New Set of Wayfinding Signs on Their Way
If you’ve ever asked a friend or relative from out of town to meet you at one of Coppell’s schools or parks, that visitor may have used some of our wayfinding signs to navigate through the city. Like the Old Town silo, those helpful signs are about to get a makeover.