The new Metz Field House offers all of the equipment athletes dedicated to their fitness need.
The Field House between the baseball field and football stadium behind Gildea Hall includes a weight room, a trainer room, two classrooms, and multiple locker rooms for teams use.
Men’s lacrosse head coach Jim Ricardo said the new site offers more convenience. “Until this year we did not have a home locker room to get dress in out at Manglesdorf. So now with the field house each sport has its own locker room per season.”
Locker rooms offer players adequate space to dress and keep gear out of their dorm rooms or cars. It also provides space for visiting teams.
Field House offers weightlifting equipment and facilities that differ from those available in the Anderson Sports and Health Center.
“It’s all rubberized material, used for explosion so you can actually toss the weights around. Whereas upstairs at Anderson, it’s all steal weights and we don’t want to be dropping those on the floor,” said Ricardo
Assistant football coach Chris Gray offers lifting programs for every athletic team on campus and serves as a strength education coach – and the new space is necessary for the addition of new players to campus.
“He has worked single-handedly with the majority of all of our teams to get some sort of lifting program going and it is going to help all of us to have an extra weight room,” Ricardo said.
Ricardo said the new facilities will better accommodate athletes’ training and conditioning needs.
“There is plenty of room in there for us,” he said. “We could get some more equipment in there, right now it is all free weights, maybe a couple more machines like a rowing machine, but right now what we need for our athletes is already in that weight room.”
Students welcome the breathing room.
“Our locker room is pretty cool” said first year baseball player Ricky Litchko. “It’s so much better because there aren’t a lot of people. It’s always so crowded in Anderson.”
He added that the Field house offers everything he needs for his training routine. “For our lifts we only really use free weights, so it has everything we need” said Litchko.