OBSERVER File Photo The Orange Bowl on Main Street in Fredonia will be getting a new scoreboard courtesy of the Fredonia Beaver Club.

The Orange Bowl is getting a new scoreboard.

The Fredonia Beaver Club donated $18,900 to the school district for a new scoreboard at the home of Fredonia High School’s football teams on West Main Street. The Fredonia Board of Education accepted the donation at its recent meeting.

At 18 feet by 8 feet, the new scoreboard will be larger than the old one, District Superintendent Jeffrey Sortisio said.

Otherwise, the proposed new scoreboard looks very similar to the old one, at least according to an artist’s rendering shown to the OBSERVER. It will be an “old-school” scoreboard that reveals the game score, ball possession, game time (including the quarter and the time left in it), down and distance to go, and nothing more. The Beaver Club’s donation will get noted in a sign on the bottom.

District Clerk Christine Slagle said she did not include the drawing in documents related to the board agenda which are placed on the district’s Web site, because the final design of the scoreboard is not official.

Athletic Director Greg Lauer started his presentation on the new scoreboard at by thanking Zach Lawley, the student who refurbished the outside of the current board in 2017 and gave it a much-needed paint job. Lauer said that while Lawley did great work, the board itself is malfunctioning.

“It really looks visually great,” Lauer said. “The problem was … it starts out at 12 minutes per quarter, then it would turn to 17 minutes right after that. If a team scored six, it came up eight. Just fixing it wasn’t really an option.”

A friend of Lauer’s approached the Beaver Club for assistance.

“We met with Rich Ryan, the financial secretary there, and he said he’d be more than happy to help us with this project,” Lauer said.

“He took it to his board of directors and they approved it just a couple of weeks ago. They’re willing to pay for all the installation and everything with it.”

Lauer said Ryan was unable to be at the meeting because he was set to be one of the MCs at the “Small Business Revolution” rally downtown Tuesday evening. “He just wanted me to convey to the board that they’re beyond happy to help the school district out with this purchase,” Lauer said. “He did mention that it was a completely unanimous vote by his board of directors at the Beaver Club. In fact, numerous board members there played football in the Orange Bowl and were very happy to give back to the program here.”

Lauer said the scoreboard should be installed and ready for the start of the next high school football season in August.