By Rustin Dodd
Tricia Sawtelle and Cara Sharpe stood together near a coat rack in the corner of the Student Recreation Fitness Center at 12:45 in the afternoon. Sawtelle and Sharp, Olathe, seniors, took off their coats and joined a smattering of students using the recreation center. The two girls, who said they use the Student Recreation Fitness Center four or five times a week, chose this time to work out for a reason. They know that in the next few hours the recreation center will become packed with weightlifters, runners, basketball players, and martial artists.
“The only way we come in the evening is if we have tests,” Sharpe said.
But students may not have to worry about the scarcity of treadmills or dumb bells during the peak hours of the recreation center for much longer. The Student Recreation and Fitness Center is in the midst of a 6.3 million dollar expansion. Mary Chappell, director of recreation services at the University of Kansas, said when construction crews finish the expansion in May 2008, students will have 45,000 square feet of new amenities and equipment.
The recreation center construction should be finished by May 2008.
The expansion, which will include four new multi-purpose courts, two new racquetball courts, a longer indoor track, a new martial arts room and a new golf simulator, is part of a growing trend of university recreation center development across the country. According to Steven Martini, the director of recreation services at Kansas State, more than 300 university recreation centers are under renovation or expansion.
On Nov. 13, Kansas State joined Kansas as one of those schools, when Kansas State students voted to pay for a 21 million dollar expansion of Peters Recreation Complex at Kansas State University.
The Kansas and Kansas State projects both came following a 49.2 million dollar expansion of the recreation center at the University of Missouri. The University of Missouri Recreation Center, or MizzouRec, opened in 2005. With 293,000 square feet of basketball courts, hot tubs, and flat-screen televisions, Sports Illustrated On Campus named MizzouRec the top university recreation center in the country in a September 2005 issue. Just like the Kansas and Kansas State recreation centers, students paid for MizzouRec with student fees.
But while university students pump more and more money into recreation centers, Chappell said her main goal was to give students what they need.
“We do see what’s going on around us,” Chappell said, about the recreation center developments at Missouri and Kansas State. “We know it’s a good retention and recruiting tool.”
Lisa Pinamonti-Kress, director of the Office of Admissions and Scholarships at the University of Kansas, said the Office of Admission sends prospective students information about the recreation center after the University accepts their application.
“It is something that we talk about, and students like to know what we have,” Pinamonti-Kress said.
Chappell agreed that the student recreation and fitness center was a positive for luring prospective students.
“They come into the rec center, and I think it paints a really good picture of something that they could utilize once they get here.”
The Student Recreation and Fitness center opened in 2003.
The University of Kansas didn’t always have a million-dollar recreation center. Until 2003, Robinson Gymnasium was the only recreation option for students. Robinson Gymnasium, which is home to the School of Education’s Health, Sport, and Exercise Science program, was open limited hours. Chappell said in 1998, Kevin Yoder, the student body president at the time, led a small task force of students to determine if students would pay for a new recreation center. That task force decided that students would pay $50 on top of the old $13 recreation fee. Student Senate charged students a $50 dollar recreation fee, and construction on the new recreation center began in 2002, with the grand opening coming in 2003.
Chappell said Recreational Services was fortunate to be adding on to the recreation center this quickly. She said in 2004, then student body president Andy Knopp negotiated a deal with athletic director Lew Perkins. Knopp traded 1500 student basketball seats to the Kansas Athletics department for 6.3 million dollars. Construction crews started working on the expansion project in March 2007.
But will a nicer recreation center actually attract potential students? Martini, who has been at Kansas State since 1980, said he thinks recreation centers play a small part in attracting students.
“It’s not so much KU has this, so K-State has to have this, but enrollment at universities has become more and more competitive over the years,” Martini said.
“You want to get students to come to your University, so you have provide the best programs, the best instructors, the best facilities.”
During the afternoon hours, many students find it hard to find open exercise machines.
Chappell has another reason for the spike in university recreation centers. Students simply expect a nice fitness center.
“Those students that are coming to us now are saying, ‘we’re used to this. This is what we had in our high schools, or at our private gym,’” Chappell said.
Chappell said she doesn’t expect the trend of bigger and better recreation centers to stop. In fact, she said people might see a new trend popping up inside recreation centers.
“You are going to see a lot of schools going to the component of wellness. When you go into a rec center, you’re not only going to be playing basketball and racquetball, but you are going to be learning how to cook right.”
Diane Dahlmann, director of Recreation Services at the University of Missouri, said that reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer the three “R’s. “Recreation is the fourth “R,” Dahlmann said.
Mary Chappell, KU director of Recreation Services, said the original architects designed the KU recreation center in three phases. Phase two is being added on to the north of the building. (Image courtesy of GoogleEarth)
The Student Recreation and Fitness center is not finished expanding. Chappell said that the initial architects designed the recreation center in three phases. This part of the project, an expansion to the north, is phase two. The third phase is an expansion to the south. Chappell said construction and completion of phase three would not be expanded until Recreation Services locates the necessary funding.