Bleachers. They are a staple when it comes to American sports. We encounter them early on in our lives, often sitting on them during our very first gym class. They are important, but why? Well, for one, they facilitate the construction of a lot of friendships when it comes to sports. You might not think about them often, but they exist everywhere. The moment you walk into any athletic building, there is always a multifunctional room that serves as a basketball court, volleyball court, and etcetera. The thing that you might not always notice, however, is the seating. Why? The seats are often hiding against the wall, giving the room enough space for the construction of teams, sports, and happy memories. So, given the circumstance, I thought one might enjoy understanding bleacher construction just a little bit more.

Different Types

The first thing you are gonna need to know about the construction of anything is the raw materials that make up that thing. In the case of bleachers, that really depends on the type you have. Surprise, there is no single standard. People utilize whatever is most convenient, cheapest and/or important to them. Most of the time, however, they are usually made with an aluminum tube or steel angle under-structure. These are known as frame-type, and they are typically the smaller bleachers you are used to seeing. If your school was small, or you were located at an improvised sporting location, you have probably been exposed to these. Another type of bleacher that is made of steel is called an I-beam bleacher. This is usually one of the larger ones that you’d be exposed to going to a big high school football game. They might not be pretty, but they definitely get the job done. Of course, wooden versions also exist, but most of the modern outdoor ones are made of some form of metal.

They also tend to have very different designs. There are a lot of small bleachers that are designed to be moved around because you never know when or where exactly you’ll need them, and no one wants to pay for the construction of sitting every single moment that you need them. I mean, no one wants to pay for construction anyway. Outdoor versions tend to differ greatly from indoor versions, in the respect that indoor bleachers usually have an accordion style design. They are easier to fold into the wall and allow for a building to transform into a stage where a community can begin. But, with all those facts aside, the question that is on everyone’s mind is this: are bleachers important? Are they worth their construction?

The Importance

Imagine this; it is your son’s fourteenth birthday, and all he wants to do is go to a baseball game, so you buy the tickets. You don’t tell him anything because you are ready to surprise him, and when the day comes you both get ready and head on over to the stadium. It is his first game in person, and he is nothing short of excited. He has told all of his friends, and he can not stop talking about how amazing it will be to attend his very first game live. There is only one issue. When you finally get there, you realize there is one major problem: your son can’t see the game. He’s a little too short. Puberty may have hit him, but he is not quite tall enough to enjoy the game yet. There are too many people and too many seats. It feels more like a theater than a show despite being on ground level. You hold your son up, but someone yells and so the two of you have to sit through the entire game completely unable to enjoy it.

You attempt to impress your son by displaying your knowledge about the history of the construction of the historic baseball stadium, but he doesn’t care. He is sad. You end up taking your son home and he locks himself in his room all day. Of course, you know he is thankful, but you also know that he was not able to enjoy himself. The special day on his special birthday completely ruined simply by the type of sitting.

Now imagine a different scenario, a more modern one. The same scene, except when you get to the middle of the front row seats, your son can see everything. He is able to watch his favorite baseball team win narrowly. The entire crowd goes wild. The people beside you are able to bond over this shared experience because instead of resenting them for being able to enjoy something in the same space that you aren’t able to, you are able to find common ground.

This time, when you and your son goes home, he is excited. He tells his everyone about his day, and when he goes to school, he tells all his friends just how much of a good time he had. He even made a friend, the tall guy sitting in front of him, because he accidentally knocked the hat off of his head.

No one ever thinks about things like that. It might seem completely mundane, ordinary and obvious, but the design of a space is important. In a gym, or in a stadium, those little things matter not because they are interesting, but because of what they allow to be possible. When it comes to determining whether or not something is worth doing, ask yourself this question: does this thing, no matter how seemingly irrelevant or insignificant, contribute to a greater good that enhances the lives of someone, even if you will never know how much it impacts, then the answer is yes.

So in the case of bleacher construction, it is important. To the vast majority of us, it might not be anything except a set of seats that we’ve seen a few times in our lifetime, but to some of us, those seats mean everything because of the memories we made while in them.