Welch Fitness Center
CHRISTA SCHROEDEL / THE DEPAUW
Twenty-one varsity teams now have 16,000 square feet available to them in the new Welch Fitness Center to train and prepare for upcoming competitions and events.
The fitness center opened Aug. 11, to the DePauw community providing a more spacious training area, which tripled the size of the old facility. The larger space and increased number of machines offers a center that is set up for both athletes and non-athletes to use and enjoy.
Fall athletes and coaches have been in practice over a month and are already seeing the positives of the new facility.
“The top of the line facility with top of the line equipment is a great opportunity for our guys to get in and get stronger,” DePauw football head coach Bill Lynch said. “Eventually it will show itself on the playing field.”
Football and other team sports are not the only ones who have benefited from Welch and its larger space, individual sports have embraced the upgrades as well.
“You get more of an opportunity to focus on individual sports, which will allow better performance,” sophomore tennis player Patrick Farrell said.
While the facility is improving the fitness of current student-athlete’s at DePauw, it is also bringing new talent to campus. Grant Skipper, a sophomore lacrosse player, believes all coaches can use Welch as a recruiting tool.
“I’m proud of the new space to show off to the recruits that will be coming through this year,” Skipper said.
The upgrades to the Lily Center including the addition of the Welch Fitness Center have been vast, but not all of the building received renovations. Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams as well as the volleyball team continue practice and play in Neal Fieldhouse, which hasn’t seen significant upgrades since 1990.
Neal includes two practice courts side by side each separated by heavy curtains with a designated game court at the end where basketball and volleyball play home games and matches.
“I love the field house we have now, but sometime it just doesn’t feel like an actual gym because all of the extra space,” a senior basketball player Tommy Fernitz said.
Susie Schmank, a sophomore on the women’s basketball team agreed with Fernitz’s assessment.
“It just doesn’t feel like an arena,” said Schmank.
Besides the outdated fieldhouse, teams that call the Lily Center home are also forced to share locker rooms.
During the winter season, men’s basketball and swimming and diving are forced to share a locker room. With swimming and diving being aquatic in nature and basketball playing on hardwood, issues have arisen from being in such tight quarters.
“It’s tough, just because [swimmers] are wet and tracking around and you don’t want to get your basketball shoes wet because they lose traction,” Fernitz said.
Schmank echoed a similar opinion.
“The water on the floor from swimmers...that’s fine if it’s just a locker room for swimmers, but it’s not fine for basketball players or volleyball players,” she said.
The communal locker room also becomes an issue when other teams interrupt team meetings or half time talks. Casey Hooker, a senior caption on the swimming and diving squad, points out that there is no way to avoid disturbing the other team.
“If they have a game on a week night and were going into a practice we don’t want interrupt that,” Hooker said. “We just try to hurry out.”
Women’s athletic teams have also had to deal with overcrowding. This issue arises during the fall as volleyball is in full swing while basketball and swimming are starting their pre-seasons. During this period, 63 women share a locker room according to rosters on the DePauw sports website.
“Its probably the size of a small bedroom, so we could definitely use some more space,” Schmank said.
While the locker rooms and Neal Fieldhouse may be lagging behind DePauw’s other state of the art facilities, they won’t be for long. The Master Plan approved by DePauw’s board of trustees in 2010, calls for renovations to the current Lily Center including a new arena and expanded locker rooms. The plan does not stop there, it also mentions new practice courts and even a new pool for the swimming and diving teams.
While some teams may struggle with the current facilities, their patience will be rewarded in the near future. For now, all athletes seem to be taking full advantage of the new space and equipment provided by the new Welch Fitness Center.