Athletics announces new facility
To encourage the success of student-athletes at USU, Athletics is raising money through private donations that will go toward building a new strength and
conditioning center on campus.
“The interest in providing the highest level of that best service and care for our student-athletes is important to us,” said Scott Barnes, USU Athletics director. “This project will help us do that.”
At just under 6,000 square feet, the Aggie Weight Room, located next to the Student Health and Wellness Center, is currently the smallest of any weight training facility in the Western Athletic Conference, Barnes said.
Building a new center will make USU more competitive and provide the best care for student-athletes.
All funding for the new project is coming from private donations, Barnes said.
“We have an anonymous $5 million commitment.The total budget for the project is $6.3 million,” Barnes said. “We’ve got some more money to raise and we’re working on that right now.”
To raise money for privately funded projects, Barnes said Athletics goes through a research process to find prospective donors.
“We connect projects to donors, making sure they have an interest in the project,” he said. “If they do — if we feel like a project is right — we’ll take it to them for an amount of money, based on what research and some of our intuition tells us we might be able to get.”
By using private money, Athletics should be able to help free up existing space on campus, providing more recreational opportunities for students not involved in sports, Barnes said.
“If the new campus rec center goes in, our needs will already be met, so we’ll have less traffic in spaces we may have needed to use,” Barnes said. “If we didn’t have this new weight room, we may have had to talk about getting time for our student-athletes in the new rec center.
“We’ll have less need to take up space in the Fieldhouse. This will lessen the burden on your average students and free up space for them.”
Evan Simon is the strength and conditioning coach who oversees the 400 USU student-athletes. He said one of the biggest problems with the current weight facilities is getting workouts done in a quicker amount of time.
“With more space we’ll be able to get more athletes through in a timely fashion,” Simon said. “With 18,000 square feet, you can get a lot more equipment in there. Where a workout may take an hour and 10 minutes now — based on the space and equipment we have now — we can maybe reduce it to 50 minutes.”
Student-athletes currently use the weight room in shifts starting at 6 a.m. and going until the late afternoon, Barnes said.
“It will be less of a burden on our student-athletes with their class schedules and trying to get workouts in,” he said. “It will be more conducive to meeting the schedules and needs of our student-athletes and coaches.”
By getting student-athletes through their workouts faster, they can spend more time focusing on school and other aspects of their sport, Simon said.
“I think it will allow them to be a better student-athlete and allows them to get more done,” he said.
Along with tripling the size of the weight training facility, Barnes said, new state-of-the-art equipment will be added and an area set aside for strength and agility training.
“The first and most important thing is giving the student-athletes more space and more equipment to workout with,” Simon said. “It will give us that much more of a variety in their workouts.”
Stetson Tenney, a junior on the football team, transferred to USU from Eastern Arizona College.
“A new strength and conditioning center is not a necessity for student-athletes on campus,” Tenney said. “You do not need to have a brand-new facility to be successful, but in order to take that next step in Aggie Football, I think a bigger, better-equipped facility will play a huge part in that.”
Providing newer, bigger facilities will also play a large role in the recruiting of future Aggies, particularly with in-state athletes, Barnes said.
“The red team (U of U) and the other blue team down south either have or are building new facilities and in order to get kids interested, our facilities need to be improved,” Tenney said. “The trend in football across the country is to have big facilities and for the Aggies to have nice facilities like that, it may persuade kids that have never heard of Utah State to come.”
Once ground is broken, Simon said, construction is expected to take 16-18 months to complete. The new center will be built west of the Jim and Carol Laub Athletics-Academic Complex near the north end zone of Romney Stadium.
Barnes said the project will go to the Building Committee Dec. 6. After it is approved there, he will be able to send a Request for Proposal to Design Services.
“A new weight room with newer equipment that our athletes can utilize will make our current athletes proud to be here,” Simon said. “I think it will be a really big asset to all of our sport coaches as well.”
“A building like this also shows our coaches and teams that the Administration and donors support them, which in turn builds not only buildings but tradition,” Tenney said.
– megan.allen@aggiemail.usu.edu