Partnership Paves Way for new FLC Sports Performance Facility

A state-of-the-art Sports Performance Center is promising to bring Fort Lewis College athletes one of the conferences best training facilities. You're watching the "Local News Network", brought to you by Man Cave Barbers and The Payroll Department. I'm Connor Shreve. Fort Lewis College and longtime partner Centura Health are strengthening their partnership for the soon-to-be foundation of the college's athletic department, The Centura Sports Performance Center. Skyhawks Athletic Director, Travis Whipple says, "The school could not have done it without Centura Health's support."

Really have witnessed a need for strength and conditioning, sports medicine, athletic training, nutrition, and really trying to look at a space that could house all those things. And as we evolved our conversations, it just made all the sense in the world to remodel 10,000 square feet of indoor space that we have here in our campus at Fort Lewis College. And it really impacts every single student-athlete.

Centura Health is committing $4 million to help convert the Aquatic Center into a modern performance rehab and wellness center for student-athletes. Fort Lewis College's strength and conditioning coordinator through Centura Health, Alec Munro, is designing the weight room with flow in mind.

One of our main goals is to eliminate any scheduling issues. So in order to do that, we have to create a weight room that we can have multiple teams in there at once and nobody's in each other's way. So we created a design to where we could have up to three small teams at once in there at the same time. And it flows just naturally.

The center will house strength and conditioning athletic training and physical therapy amenities including on-campus training and recovery guided by Mercy Sports Medicine trainers with experience in sports medicine and orthopedic treatment. The medical support provided by Centura Health also promises to address food security, suicide awareness, and overdose prevention.

We're trying to provide the best possible experience for every one of our student-athletes. And when we think about health and wellness, it's always going to be a priority for us and also mental health, and that's a key component as well. And so really just want them to have access, have an amazing facility that they take a lot of pride in and can take advantage of so many wonderful services that can really impact them.

Munro believes wellness is an important building block when it comes to on field success.

Our biggest goal is keep them available, keep them healthy, and with the resources that we're going to get from this new weight room, we'll have rehab athletic training room right next to us. We'll have rehab equipment in the weight room. We'll have all the exercise equipment that we need, so that'll be a big deal.

The Skyhawks Athletic department includes more than 400 student-athletes, spread out over 16 programs, and Munro says, "The new facility will do a much better job of accommodating as many athletes as possible."

Right now, we have a 2,000 square foot weight room that we use. All of the equipment that we have is from the late 1900s. We have 11 racks and we have old dumbbells up to 120 pounds. Whereas, the new weight room that we're going to be in, we're going to have 24 racks, a set of dumbbells from 5 to 90 pounds at each rack. We'll have rehab equipment, cardio equipment. It's going to be about 8,000 square feet, so almost four times as big as what we're in right now. So it'll be a huge change.

Plans also include a turf area for speed and agility work as well as a sprint lane for testing. Munro says, he'll be happy when he gets to move his desk out of the weight room and into a standalone office. Renovations are set to begin this fall. Thanks for watching the "Local News Network". I'm Connor Shreve.