New scoreboards, locker room spaces, a varsity weight room and other equipment upgrades are set to debut at Keene State College’s athletic facilities this fall, according to KSC President Dr. Melinda Treadwell.
“For athletics, it’s important because I want our student athletes to feel a sense of pride in who they are and that they represent an institution that cares about them,” Treadwell said.
These projects are the result of the $4.2 million investments from the University System of New Hampshire (USNH) Board of Trustees for “athletics enhancement and growth.” The college announced a total of $16 million in investments for KSC from the Board of Trustees in November.
$1.4 million was released for the current fiscal year from the athletics investments to complete the projects, Treadwell said.
LOCKER ROOMS
Already underway is the construction of three new locker rooms for KSC’s Softball, Track & Field and both Swimming and Diving teams.
Currently, the teams share a space in the basement of Spaulding separated in a cage structure. This space will remain the home of the teams’ locker rooms, but they “will all be enclosed with branding and private lockers so that we create a common sense of locker room space for all of our teams,” Treadwell said.
The project will double the size of each team’s locker room, allowing teams to better accommodate expanded roster sizes. The college is looking to shift roster sizes to align more closely with the NCAA average, Softball Head Coach Carrah Fisk Hennessey said. For softball, that number is 20.
“We will no longer have a locker cage space, we will have a true locker room with real walls and a door and it will be able to fit our expanded roster size,” Fisk Hennessey said.
IMPROVEMENTS TO SPAULDING, OWL ATHLETIC COMPLEX
Decades-old essential equipment and structures at the Spaulding Gym and Owl Athletic Complex are being upgraded and replaced.
The bullpen, sideline and outfield fencing around the baseball and softball fields will see renovations for the first time in close to 30 years, Fisk Hennessey said.
She said the replacement of the fencing and backstops on the baseball and softball fields “will make a giant impact on being able to keep the ball in play and making it feel more like a college facility.”
The pool inside the Spaulding Gym is also seeing upgrades to decades-old equipment, including new diving boards and blocks, as well as bleacher replacements.
“We did the deck and the ventilation in there two years ago,” Treadwell said. “So now we’re upgrading beyond the deck of the pool.”
All four fields at the complex are also getting new scoreboards, which Fisk Hennessey said is a necessary improvement since they stopped making the replacement bulbs over a decade ago.
New lighting and internet upgrades are also included in the improvements directed at the Owl Athletic Complex.
“I think it’s just going to feel good for all of the student athletes that are coming in for the first time to be part of something that looks new and feels new. And for the student athletes that have been here for a long time to realize that yes, your work does get recorded and rewarded,” she said.
Fisk Hennessey added that she appreciates the investment dollars being allocated to necessary equipment and facility upgrades “so that we’re not just doing things that look pretty. We’re doing things that actually serve a function,” Fisk Hennessey said.
NEW VARSITY WEIGHT ROOM AND OTHER UPGRADES
Keene State’s varsity athletes will see a weight room exclusively for them within the next two years, Treadwell said.
A temporary varsity weight room will open for athletes in the fall, but a “dedicated space” for the facility is to be determined, Treadwell said. An engineering assessment found the originally selected location on the third floor of the Spaulding Gym could not support the weight of the equipment.
New strength and conditioning equipment has been ordered to supply the varsity weight room, but also to upgrade what is currently in the existing recreation center on the first floor of the Spaulding Gym.
“It’s a really important part of health and wellness promotion and we want to improve the general space as well as the athlete space,” Treadwell said.
Plans for other long-term projects, including the construction of an on-campus track facility and the addition of new Division III teams to the college’s existing list of rosters, are also in the works.
The overarching feeling among KSC athletics is that these improvement and renovation projects have been a long time coming.
“I think they’re a sign that athletics is a valued part of the Keene State community and that it’s something that the administration and the board believes that we should be showing off,” Abe Osheyack, assistant athletic director, said. “We’re very pleased and humbled that we’re one of these targets for these investment dollars.”
Caitlin Howard can be contacted at
choward@kscequinox.com
