Four new welcome signs in the town of Maplesville are being installed this month.

“We are thrilled,” Maplesville Town Clerk Dawn Smitherman said. “We are very proud of the signs.”

The signs were designed by three Maplesville students enrolled in an introduction to engineering design course at LeCroy Career Technical Center.

Jay LeCroy one of the course instructors said when Maplesville won the state football championship in 2014 they knew the signs had to be changed.

“We had the girls design something to begin with, then they cut the signs and sanded them down,” LeCroy said. “We separated the big town sign from each individual state championship so that if they win again, they can just add to the sign.”

The three Maplesville students who worked on the signs were Katelyn Giles, Olivia Smitherman and Breanna Weaver, alongside LeCroy and instructor Jason Sosa.

“We first decided to pick four different designs of signs we liked, and then we picked out ones we liked from the four different designs,” Weaver said. “We used a program called Inkscape to cut the signs out, but we didn’t have sanders so we had to sand the signs by hand.”

The students also had to make a presentation to the Maplesville Town Council about the project.

“I think that was a really neat part of the whole process was going to a council meeting,” Weaver said. “I didn’t really know much about council meetings so going and meeting with them was really cool.”

The council voted unanimously in March to donate up to $2,000 for the materials to build the new welcome signs for the town.

“We worked on this project for a grade, and I can honestly say this is the hardest I have ever worked for an A,” Weaver said. “The neatest part, though, was knowing that the work we were doing was giving back to the town. Even if we leave and move on, we can always come back and see the project we worked on.”

Once the students completed the signs, Smitherman said Melissa Thompson painted the signs.

“She really had to work to come up with the exact shade of red to match Maplesville’s colors,” Smitherman said. “It was definitely a community project to get these signs ready.”

The first sign to be installed last week is located on Highway 22 coming into Maplesville from Selma.

There will also be signs on County Road 10, County Road 139 and one on Hwy. 22 coming into Maplesville from Clanton that should be installed within the next couple of weeks.

“We have started seeing people in the town post pictures of the sign on Facebook,” Smitherman said. “People are really proud of them.”