Upper Peninsula Mill makes championship floors

AMASA– Basketball season is coming to a close.

And one Upper Peninsula Company has been working to make sure the players have a solid foundation to play on. Connor Sports mill in Amasa pride themselves on making solid sports flooring.

Connor Sports Flooring Mill Manager Randy Hansen said, “We run on efficiency and yield, very hands on, got a great group of people here, we run a lot of material here targeting about 30,000 square feet of ship.”

And Hansen said that they make sure that this is some of the best flooring available and that has lead them to making the flooring for the NCAA final four court. To start, they use maple harvested right in the U.P. After that they take the wood and cut in to the correct size, surfaces it, defect the wood, run it through their molders, defect it again and the end matches are put on.

“Separate bundle and then strap it up and palletize for the warehouse,” Hansen added.

And then the material is assembled in another area where it is framed, the flooring is applied and it’s sent out. Engineered Products Manager for Conner Sports Scott Starkey said, “Which entails roughly on average 90 labor hours per so, so pretty extensive.”

A lot of hard work goes into producing flooring for the NCAA, however the crew says it’s well worth it.

“Oh it’s very gratifying,” Starkey said, “our production workers don’t necessarily see the completed project until they see it on the floor, in use.”

“Everybody in this building is ecstatic for the floors that we turn out, we’re very proud,” Hansen said. ‘The feeling is, I can’t even explain it, it’s ecstatic.”

Connor Sports produces flooring for the NCAA and the NBA.