tedginn05
Legend
Interesting. I wonder if the place will be ready for the OSU Football Camp this summer.
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With Hayes Center being renovated, weightlifting shifts to fenced-in area
Friday, February 10, 2006
Tim May
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
<!--PHOTOS--> <table class="phototableright" align="right" border="0"><!-- begin large ad code --> <tbody><tr><td> <table align="center"> <tbody><tr><td align="center"></td></tr> <tr><td class="credit" width="200"> ERIC ALBRECHT | DISPATCH </td></tr> <tr><td class="cutline" width="200">Ohio State football player Zach Willis lifts in the makeshift weight room. </td></tr> </tbody></table> </td></tr> </tbody></table>
Roy Hall finished his mid-morning weightlifting workout with some of his fellow Ohio State football players yesterday, then extended a hand to a visitor.
"Welcome to the yard," Hall said.
He was standing near the east end of Woody Hayes Athletic Center’s indoor field. Behind him was an 8-foothigh cyclone fence stretching almost the width of the football field, encompassing about the final 20 yards, and harboring every piece of weight room equipment the football team owns.
It all used to be in the adjoining weight room. But the players aren’t allowed in there or anywhere else in the formal part of the Hayes Center. The building, which opened in 1987, is undergoing a $19.97 million renovation and expansion.
However, when walls are being knocked down and new foundations are being poured, something has to give. In this case, it’s the players and coaches.
The players are using a small locker room at the end of the adjacent Biggs Facility. The coaches have moved into a 6,000-square-foot temporary office complex in the Fawcett Center across Olentangy River Road.
"There will be some things we have to adjust to over the course of the next eight or nine months," coach Jim Tressel said. "But once we get back into the WHAC, it’s just going to be a much-improved facility."
But the work of building toward the 2006 season must go on now, which is where "the yard" comes in. The strength training and conditioning staff of Allan Johnson, Bernardo Amerson and Butch Reynolds have, in essence, moved their winter workout program onto the back porch.
"I tell you what, these kids have really embraced this; I think this is the best enthusiasm we’ve had for our winter workouts since I’ve been here," said Johnson, in his fifth year. "Some of the guys even wanted us to put barbed wire up around the top for effect, but that wasn’t approved."
Lineman T.J. Downing, a senior-to-be like Hall, said taking the inconvenience and running with it was the only way to go.
"It doesn’t matter where you work, it’s what you do when you’re working that matters," Downing said. "I think our guys are working hard. We know this sets the stage for the kind of football team we’ll be in the fall."
As for the surroundings, "It feels like we’re outside, which feels more like football," sophomore defensive lineman Nader Abdallah said. "I think it makes the workouts more exciting."
Johnson and Amerson have tried to make things a little different from year to year, anyway.
"I credit these players for accepting challenges, and just getting the work done, no matter what," Amerson said. "That’s what makes Ohio State special."
The construction schedule has the players’ locker room and the meeting rooms being completed in time for the start of preseason camp in August. The new weight room, which is doubling in size to about 16,000 square feet, won’t be finished until late in the season. It’s the same with the coaches’ offices.
When the work is done, there will be a new entrance showcasing the championship teams and trophies and player awards. There also will be a second-floor players lounge and other amenities.
"Everything about this place is going to be state of the art," Hall said. "But I tell you what, I’m enjoying these winter workouts out here in the yard."
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