Changes are coming to athletics as athletes will have another option to make sure they are on the course of remaining eligible.
Carlos Woods, the head coach for football, wants to make a lounge a reality so that student athletes can have a space for down time while they juggle their classes and compete.
“People don’t realize that when you’re a student athlete, you have an extra component added into your life. You have so many obligations that you are responsible for and anything I can do to help them relieve some of that stress, that’s what it’s all about,” Woods said.
Woods said he thinks the new lounge should be located by the field house.
“It is a multi-purpose room, we will be able to have meetings there, study halls, and we also have games like chess to keep them engaged if they want. It’s their own little area where they can just decompress for a minute,” Woods said.
The lounge will be open when there is a staff member able to supervise.
“It has to fit in our time schedule and our availability of non practice hours, so these are things we need to factor in for the launch date as well,” Woods said.
The new lounge is also going serve a purpose of giving free haircuts to athletes.
“There is a small part that is vacated in the room. We have coaches on staff that are professional barbers and they want to donate their time and energy to keep the guys looking good,” Woods said.
Coach Aaron Thaler sees this as an opportunity to give the student athletes the rest they need to perform at their best.
“I think it is a great outlet for our players to come before practice and just hang out and get peace of mind before a game,” Thaler said.
Nolan Bodeau, from the baseball team, is looking forward to the implementation of a new lounge.
“That would be awesome, sometimes the internet sucks in the library [laughs], so if we had a nice little hang out spot that would be nice. We do not have a a clubhouse here for the baseball players either, so it would be nice to have somewhere to go and get my work done,” Bodeau said.
Bodeau said that he gets his assignments done before the team meets.
I usually have time after class to go do my homework in my car before practice, so to have somewhere to go do it would be awesome. It would be nice for the other teams to meet each other, since we have practice at different time,” Bodeau said.
The student athlete lounge is not open yet but it is being worked on.
“It really depends, there is no set date, some things took priority over this but since we are off season, we can go back in there and organize it to get it to the way we want to,” Woods said.
