Bradenton Christian unveils a blessing: the $19 million Pentecost Athletic Center
The landscape of Bradenton Christian School has been forever changed with the completion of a $19 million sports complex.
From early morning to late evening, BCS students would often wait for their turn in the Panther Den, a small gymnasium that was decades old. Superintendent Dan Vande Pol paid homage to the old facility and unveiled a new 65,000-square-foot-complex on Thursday morning.
Students could now spread throughout the athletic center, training, playing and learning in unison. They were home in time for dinner, family bonding, homework and fun with friends.
“You have girls basketball practicing here,” he said. “You have wrestling practice here. You have boys high school practicing here, boys middle school practicing there. You’ve got the football team in the weight room. You’ve got the soccer team practicing out here. You’ve got track and cross country running.”
The Pentecost Athletic Center — named after the project’s largest benefactor — includes several courts for basketball, volleyball and wrestling, along with a multi-purpose field for soccer and football. Other features include a weight room, kitchen, cafeteria, skybox and office space.
And in a recent news release, BCS announced the upcoming completion of baseball fields and beach volleyball areas.
“One of our courts is a rubber court they’ll eat lunch on. The tables fold up, go away and then it’s a basketball court. It’s not just for sports. It will impact every student on the campus,” the superintendent said.
The new facility began as a humble idea that grew with support from Mark Pentecost and his family, which made a $17 million donation through the Pentecost Foundation. The family also operates a successful health and beauty company — It Works! — that is based in Palmetto and found throughout the world.
In an interview on Thursday morning, Pentecost said he became involved with the project after helping his daughter move to Florida and find a school for her three children. BCS quickly made the top of their list.
“The feeling, the love, the heart was really good,” Pentecost said. “But we walked into the basketball facility and it felt like the old ‘Hoosiers’ movie. Great facility, it’s been around 50 years, but my wife — uncharacteristic of her — said, ‘Oh no, our grand-kids got to have better than this.’ That kind of started the seed.”
The school was already discussing a new gymnasium when Pentecost joined the conversation. The idea snowballed from there, and while the new facility was a benefit to student athletics, it was meant to serve the greater mission at BCS.
Vande Pol and Pentecost said sports provide students with lessons and mentorship that would carry into all their future endeavors. That goal was enshrined in the halls of the new Pentecost Athletic Center:
“Dedicate your children to God and point them in the way that they should go, and the values they’ve learned from you will be with them for life,” a wall reads, citing Proverbs 22:6.
This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 3:05 PM.