By Wayne Stickney, the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Major Gifts and Revenue at Long Beach State, spoke to the Daily 49er about the new Track & Field located next to the Horn Center.
Stickney discussed plans for additions to the Walter Pyramid, as well as the plan to improve the development of student-athletes.
Spring 2015 was the expected time for the completion of the track and field renovations. Is there an update on the progress?
Internally we always talked about the end of Spring 2015. I’ve seen the sign, but I’ve never read it. It’s set to be finished the end of May.
Do you expect any delays?
It could be pushed into early June. Long story short, as of today, it was going to be finished [about three to four weeks ago] around mid May. One of the subcontractors, we had an issue with that person. [It’s] not a big deal, but it delayed the project like two weeks.
When do you expect for it to be completed?
I’m hearing [it will be completed at] end of May or early June. Next week, I hear that we’re going to start seeing the striping happening on the lanes. That could be cool.
What other major projects are in the works?
[Blair Field and Track & Field] are two of the three big [projects]. The third one is an athletic performance complex. There’s a space in the Walter Pyramid. We’re going to renovate it and create three centers in complex. Right now we have a bunch of strength equipment in there. We’re going to create a nutrition center, strength and conditioning center and a sports medicine center.
What do you think will be the impact on the athletic department when all these upgrades are complete?
What happens in that scenario is we’ve created a premier recruiting space. In addition, it becomes a central place for the bulk of our teams: four Walter Pyramid sports and six Track & Field and cross-country, which are both indoor and outdoor. We’ve got softball right down the road. Then you have water polo and tennis. It’s all centralized right here, which is really effective.
What will be some of the advantages to having all the sports teams centralized?
The NCAA only allows so much time and practice. A great benefit to this is we’re going to try to secure support for nutrition drinks, maybe some extra meals out of this space. [Student-athletes] have to run around. They go from practice to class. Sometimes they skip a meal. That’s horrible. When they skip meals their muscles aren’t getting the nutrition to rebuild. That’s when injuries start happening.
