While for the meantime the students of Quincy University returned home for the summer the workers, coaches, and volunteers all chipped in to help with the manual labor region of remodeling the athletic weight room.

What was before is bigger and better than ever! The rooms that were “added” into the weight room were already there, just happened to be occupied by other things from around campus and have now been renovated and remodeled for the weight room.

A set of the rooms being used for miscellaneous storage and an extra room that was occupied by the art department’s pottery room that has now been relocated due to the renovations. 

So while from the average eye of a student might not seem like anything much had changed around the campus of Quincy University, specifically the athletic weight room, the inside of the building told a much different story. 

“Alongside the new strength and conditioning coach that the school hired and all of the new equipment. I think teams will be in here more often utilizing everything compared to years past and it seems like not every team used this place and even if they did, I am not sure how effectively they were able to,” student athlete Jayme Brain said.  

A quick overview of everything new that can be found in the athletic weight room alongside what was already in there. 

• Glute/ Hamstring machines  
• 5 squat racks 
• Turf/Agility area
• Lat pulldown machines
• Cable machines
• Bands for stretching/exercises
• Calf/ Lower Leg machines
• Hack squat machines
• Slam balls (weighted and more durable medicine balls)

“It’s funny because what was supposed to be the easier part of the job ended up being the harder part and vice-versa,” said head coach of the men’s lacrosse team, Eric Ruppel. 

The base of the racks and large equipment arrived before other smaller hardware. Creating a hassle and extra manual labor in order to assemble the remodeled room.

Alongside a congregation of coaches and volunteers, these are the people that the university as a whole has to thank for their time and effort for a very tedious task to be effectively and very efficiently completed. 

This whole renovation process of the weight room was funded by a very generous and recently developed athletic grant by athletic director Josh Rabe to help support the athletics and their needs across all sports and events that this college is represented by. 

“Start to finish was projected to be around 10 to 12 weeks from demolition through renovations and then obviously getting able to begin using it. But with the help we received from various staff members in moving a lot of the racks and heavier things inside, they helped things go a lot smoother through the entire process and we were able to be done at the start of week 9. Right about when the fall sports showed up,” Ruppel said. 

“From having to do our early season workouts last year in the Health and Fitness Center with older equipment that we didn’t have many sets of, for a whole team that can be difficult!!! Then compared to this year having everything new that was added and then also the strength coach that we are supposedly getting a workout plan and such through. It’s been a huge and great change coming back and going into this semester and season so far,” student-athlete Faith Krabbe said. 

Not only did the weight room have a buzz around it evolving everything new, as previously mentioned the addition of a strength and conditioning coach alongside of a newly adapted weight lifting program called TeamBuildR, athletics as a whole have a lot of great things to look forward to in their upcoming seasons.