Aggie athletes weigh in $8.7M facility

COLLEGE STATION – Texas A&M opened a new weight room for the athletes who were displaced after Netum Steed Laboratory was torn down during the $450 million Kyle Field renovation.

The 22,000-sf West Campus Player Development Center cost $8.7 million and is across the street from Reed Arena and adjacent to Ellis Field. About 12,000 sf of the building is a weight room; the rest is office space and an applied exercise science laboratory.

Football, basketball and baseball players have their own weight rooms, and the new facility houses 400 athletes from 14 teams such as softball, golf and Olympic sports.

New benefits for the facility include Infinity flooring with the weightlifting platforms built in, three massive overhead fans, an approximately 16-foot-tall concrete medicine ball wall and approximately 60 feet by 50 feet of turf outside.

The facility will ultimately house a full-time nutritionist. There are hookups in place for 14 televisions and there are data ports next to the work stations so that one day the weight room can go paperless. Administrators also plan to use the hookups to install cameras so athletes can film workouts to examine technique and bar movement speed.