Celebrating school success with sand

LAGO VISTA, Texas (KXAN) - One class a time, students file out of Lago Vista Elementary School . They amble, single file, down a long sidewalk to the end of the building. That's when their jaws drop.

"It's amazing," said one girl, "because I've never really seen stuff like this and when they do it, it makes it really fun to see new stuff."

Nearby, a boy gushed, "This is one of the only things that we kind of have to put in front of our school and people will think, 'Wow, that's really cool.'"

So what has these kids wide-eyed? The answer to that question is 45 tons of sand that was piled on the school yard and transformed over a four-day period into a giant sculpture of an ornery-looking viking in honor of the school district mascot.

The lead sculptor on the project is Brad Goll , whose artistic talent began to bloom on a California beach 25 years ago.

"At that time I was a pressman," said Goll. "I ran a printing press but I found that once I started doing sand sculpture, I was at my other job thinking about what I could be building in sand. So when the opportunity came, it was pretty much a no-brainer; I jumped right into it."

Now Goll makes his living molding sand into all kinds of sculptures. On Sept. 10, his work will take him to China.

"They have put together an international team," said Goll's wife, who helps him with some of his projects. "They're trying to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the tallest sand sculpture. It's supposed to be 25 meters, which is approximately eight stories high."

Goll is not the only Central Texan who makes a living with this sort of thing. In fact, he was joined on the Lago Vista job by his wife and Leander resident Jon Woodworth.

"It's weird, isn't it?" asked Woodworth. "How many people can say they get to play in the sand all day and get paid for it? If you can make a kid jealous of what you do, you're doing something right," he laughed.

In Lago Vista, though, no one is getting paid. The three sculptors donated their work to celebrate the local school district's new "exemplary" rating from the Texas Education Agency .

"Even though maybe not all of our campuses were exemplary, the district is really the toughest piece to put together in the accountability puzzle," said school superintendent Matt Underwood. "So an exemplary district, it's a big deal."

Some people would put up a congratulatory banner and be done with it, but when the folks at the Lago Vista and Jonestown Area Chamber of Commerce heard the exemplary rating, they wanted to do more.

"It was a good opportunity for us to create an event which celebrated that exemplary status with a really unique event," said chamber president Chuck Wills. "And then the theme came along that we could do a viking type theme, which would really life school spirit and have an exemplary rating and it just all came together like that. It's awesome."

Goll couldn't agree more. He and his team donated their labor for the Lago Vista job as a gift in honor of the school district's success. He did have one bit of compensation, though: Another opportunity to perfect his style and technique.

"I build them, but I still strive to be better than I was the last time I did it," he said.

He is striving, perhaps, for something like, "exemplary."

"Exemplary, there you go," he mused. "It's a good word; I learned it today."

The kids, meanwhile, were about to return to class after their ever-so-brief field trip to the front yard of their school. As they left, one of them spoke for the rest: "I think it brings lots of pride to a little town and I think that lots of people, when they pass by, they say, 'I want to be a viking, too.'"