Andrew Crighton
Staff Writer
Since its 32,000-square foot, $7 million overhaul in 2010, the student recreation center at Reed Gymnasium has yet to receive a large supplemental upgrade to equipment. This was before campus recreation installed over $85,000 of new equipment in Reed Gym. This new equipment includes 22 Precor “Selectorized” line strength-training stations, several new plate loaded equipment benches for the free weight area and a Jacob’s ladder cardio machine.
Campus recreation sent the old equipment to the ISU-Meridian Health Science Center.
Preparations began around September of 2014, establishing what the gym needed and placing the order out for bidding.
“We decided as a program to do an upgrade to allow us to improve the equipment we have, [and] to direct some of our used equipment to the Meridian campus,” said Bill Maclachlan, associate director of campus recreation.
These upgrades were made without putting any additional costs onto students. When tuition and fees are decided, a particular amount is set aside to pay for the campus recreation department, which provides a membership to all full and part-time students.
Additionally, some of these funds combat maintenance and operational costs. They are allocated to the intramural programs and other areas, and some are placed into reserve. The funds for the upgrade came from the campus recreation reserve fund.
“You get a certain amount of money in reserves, and you don’t just want to sit on it to say that you have money, you put it into something like this,” Maclachlan said. “You want to improve your equipment every few years to take advantage of upgrades, technology, aesthetics and everything else.”
ASISU funded the initial expansion in 2010, bringing in new equipment to fill the second story, and campus recreation added several new pieces or machines throughout the years; however this is the first upgrade of this size for the student recreation center since then.
It’s estimated the new equipment should get approximately twenty years of good use.
“I think that it’s great to get the new equipment, it’s really nice to have it,” said Darren Strong, an exercise science student, “but there are some machines that worked certain muscles really well that I can’t find anymore.”
Campus recreation is part of the Division of Student Affairs, and part of their goal is to serve students in their college endeavors that take place outside of the classroom. Campus recreation offers sports clubs, personal training and intramural sports in addition to the fitness areas.
“For me personally, I like to see people stay active,” said Maclachlan. “They don’t have to come lift weights, fine. It can be climbing the wall, shooting a basketball, hitting a racquet ball or practicing dance in one of the rooms. Find a passion; you never have a better chance to try a bunch of new things than in college.”
Ty Johnson is a sophomore who started an intramural flag football team. The ISU Intermural Program through the campus recreation department offers a wide variety of individual and team sport activities to become involved at ISU.
“I thought it would be fun to get a group together and meet some new people,” said Johnson. “Plus I played before and it was a lot of fun, it’s just a really good avenue to stay active.”
