BleedGopher
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per Sid:
Scott Ellison, Gophers associate athletic director in charge of the Athletes Village facilities project, is enthusiastically reporting the project is progressing as scheduled. He recently spoke about every aspect of where the $166 million project is at and where it’s going.
Q How are the facilities coming along overall?
A The facility project is going along really well. My favorite saying is we’re on time and we’re on budget. That is factual. We’re on time and we’re on budget. The football facilities are taking shape as well. The biggest building as part of this is the U indoor football facility, and you could actually fit the old football facility inside the new facility. We have 85 feet to the peak of the indoor facility so we can actually punt indoors; that was one of the problems we had in the old facility was you couldn’t punt indoors because we were at 65 feet. That’s going to be a huge advantage for us going forward with practices.
Q How far is that building in terms of construction?
A I would say the Center for Excellence, which is the academic and leadership center along with the basketball practice facility, is ahead of the football facility. If I were to put percentages on it I would say the football facility is probably in the 40 percent range, right now. They have a lot of the exterior is starting to get framed up on the football performance center, which is the office complex and the weight room and locker room complex. Then all of the steel skeleton is up for the new indoor facility and they’re going to start siding that soon. It’s really going to start taking shape in the next month and a half.
Q What makes the facility better than the old facility?
A First of all, we’re going to have a weight room that’s going to be twice the size of the weight room we have now for football, approximately 7,000 square feet to 16,000 square feet for the weight room. The athletic medicine area will be a much better facility for the football players and for the team. We’re going to have two what are called hydro-works treadmills in there, so if there’s a player who can’t put any weight on an injury it can actually get him into these treadmill pools and they can do non-weightbearing rehab sessions without any issues with their injuries. That’s a unique feature to the facility. The offices and the team meeting rooms and position meeting rooms are all on one level now. In our current facility the offices are all on the top floor, the position meeting rooms are on the lower floor so there’s a lot of going back and forth between those two floors just for the players to meet with the coaches and now it will all be on the same floor.
Q What about the basketball facility, what does that add to the team?
A Well, what they have right now is the women practice over in Williams Arena and they have four baskets that they can practice on. The men practice in Bierman and they have six baskets they can practice on but it’s only on one court. So really if the team is practicing no one else can put up shots or get on the court, and those situations are for the men and the women. With the new facility, both men and women will have basketball courts and we have a main practice court with two cross-courts and the beauty of those two cross-courts is that the three-point arc is not on one side of that cross-court is not on the main practice court. So if the team is practicing and there’s a player that needs to put up shots they can go over there and put up shots without interrupting practice. In addition we have eight baskets total in each gym, so that’s a huge improvement over what we have now.
http://www.startribune.com/gophers-...thletes-village-facilities-project/421538983/
Go Gophers!!
Scott Ellison, Gophers associate athletic director in charge of the Athletes Village facilities project, is enthusiastically reporting the project is progressing as scheduled. He recently spoke about every aspect of where the $166 million project is at and where it’s going.
Q How are the facilities coming along overall?
A The facility project is going along really well. My favorite saying is we’re on time and we’re on budget. That is factual. We’re on time and we’re on budget. The football facilities are taking shape as well. The biggest building as part of this is the U indoor football facility, and you could actually fit the old football facility inside the new facility. We have 85 feet to the peak of the indoor facility so we can actually punt indoors; that was one of the problems we had in the old facility was you couldn’t punt indoors because we were at 65 feet. That’s going to be a huge advantage for us going forward with practices.
Q How far is that building in terms of construction?
A I would say the Center for Excellence, which is the academic and leadership center along with the basketball practice facility, is ahead of the football facility. If I were to put percentages on it I would say the football facility is probably in the 40 percent range, right now. They have a lot of the exterior is starting to get framed up on the football performance center, which is the office complex and the weight room and locker room complex. Then all of the steel skeleton is up for the new indoor facility and they’re going to start siding that soon. It’s really going to start taking shape in the next month and a half.
Q What makes the facility better than the old facility?
A First of all, we’re going to have a weight room that’s going to be twice the size of the weight room we have now for football, approximately 7,000 square feet to 16,000 square feet for the weight room. The athletic medicine area will be a much better facility for the football players and for the team. We’re going to have two what are called hydro-works treadmills in there, so if there’s a player who can’t put any weight on an injury it can actually get him into these treadmill pools and they can do non-weightbearing rehab sessions without any issues with their injuries. That’s a unique feature to the facility. The offices and the team meeting rooms and position meeting rooms are all on one level now. In our current facility the offices are all on the top floor, the position meeting rooms are on the lower floor so there’s a lot of going back and forth between those two floors just for the players to meet with the coaches and now it will all be on the same floor.
Q What about the basketball facility, what does that add to the team?
A Well, what they have right now is the women practice over in Williams Arena and they have four baskets that they can practice on. The men practice in Bierman and they have six baskets they can practice on but it’s only on one court. So really if the team is practicing no one else can put up shots or get on the court, and those situations are for the men and the women. With the new facility, both men and women will have basketball courts and we have a main practice court with two cross-courts and the beauty of those two cross-courts is that the three-point arc is not on one side of that cross-court is not on the main practice court. So if the team is practicing and there’s a player that needs to put up shots they can go over there and put up shots without interrupting practice. In addition we have eight baskets total in each gym, so that’s a huge improvement over what we have now.
http://www.startribune.com/gophers-...thletes-village-facilities-project/421538983/
Go Gophers!!