ST. PETERSBURG — A lightning strike touched off a three-alarm fire in the gymnasium at St. Petersburg Catholic High School on Sept. 8, damaging the floor, the roof and the sound system and leaving the volleyball team without a home court in the middle of its season.
Athletic Director Ryan Mueller said the school is in talks with Eckerd College about moving immediate home games there.
“Currently still doing an initial assessment of the damage to the gym,” Mueller said. “I know the floor, speaker system, and roof were damaged heavily.”
No one was hurt.
St. Petersburg Fire Rescue crews were called to the campus on Ninth Avenue North about 3:30 p.m. Sept. 8 for a reported structure fire. Commanders upgraded the call to three alarms, triggering a multi-agency response involving more than 80 first responders. Firefighters attacked the fire from inside the building while other crews worked from the roof to hold the flames and limit damage to the structure.
Smoke poured from the gym roof as parents were directed to pick up students in front of the school.
“All students and faculty are safe and no one was injured,” the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg said in a statement. The diocese asked the community to “pray for our firefighters, first responders and the entire school community.”
Mueller said he was thankful no one was injured and praised city firefighters as extremely attentive.
Classes had let out, but many students were still on campus because of heavy rain.
Fire Rescue listed the cause as under investigation Sept. 8 and had not formally attributed the fire to lightning. Crews stayed at the school overnight to watch for hot spots.
Volleyball is the only sport using the gym this fall. Basketball does not tip off until November, giving the school a window to make repairs before a second program is displaced.
The volleyball team was already scrambling for games before the fire. In July, Pinellas County Schools Athletic Director Marc Allison barred every public high school in the district from scheduling St. Petersburg Catholic in any sport for 2026-27, the first time the district has moved to freeze out a private school. Games already under contract were honored. Everything else was scrapped, including five volleyball matches against county public schools.
The district has not said publicly what prompted the freeze. It followed complaints about the school’s heavy investment in athletics and a wave of transfers — at least two dozen over two seasons.
A new gym is coming, but not soon. In July, the St. Petersburg Development Review Commission approved a $64 million master plan for the campus, the largest expansion in the school’s nearly 70-year history, spread across 11 phases. Each phase depends on private fundraising.
The first phase, a Center for Scientific Discovery, is under construction. An 80,000-square-foot athletic center with a new gymnasium, wrestling and cheer space and beach volleyball courts is a later phase, four to six years out and contingent on money that has not been raised.
President Ross Bubolz told St. Pete Rising in July that athletics had historically been the school’s least supported area and that the plan was meant to change that.
Enrollment has climbed from about 285 students to roughly 550 in recent years. The campus opened in 1957 as Bishop Barry High School and took its current name in 1973, when Bishop Barry merged with Notre Dame Academy.
The full scope of the damage has not been released. The diocese said it will provide updates as they become available.