Even though the academic year is coming to a close, Concordia’s athletic department is continuing to revamp its weight room.
For the past two years, athletes have brought up the question of when Concordia would be getting a new weight room.
After hearing the question be tossed around for the past two years, sophomore Andrew Dosch decided to put an end to the questioning.
Once Dosch decided to take on the task, he pitched his idea to the Student Government Association and was granted a SPIF grant.
Former Student Government president Levi Bachmeier was one of the SGA members that voted in favor of the grant.
According to Bachmeier this year’s health and wellness survey showed that a “quarter of students work out for less than half an hour a week,” and that most students work out for less than two hours a week.
Being a student athlete himself, Bachmeier felt that these results needed to be changed.
“That’s all the motivation that one needs to take a critical look at how we can improve and incentivize participation in physical fitness,” Bachmeier said.
Before Dosch received the grant, SGA sat down and decided how much money would be given to Dosch for funding. According to Bachmeier the SGA committee decided to give Dosch about $43,000 for renovation purposes.
“There’s been a really whole realistic attempt to make sure that we’re not just throwing money at an issue and that we are really working collectively across campus to make sure that we can address this problem at it’s root,” Bachmeier said. “(We) wanted to make sure we could get Cobbers to be a little more diligent when it comes to physical exercise.”
After Dosch’s grant was passed, he sat down with Concordia’s strength and conditioning coach Brandon Toothaker. Combining both of their ideas and taking a closer look at the college’s needs they began the revamping process.
According to Glas, after Toothaker and Dosch took a closer look at the current state of the weight room, they decided that the floor needed to be redone because of the impact that the weights have put on the current floor. They also decided to re-paint the room and move around the machines to make the room more spacious.
Although Dosch had a say in the future layout of the room, he allowed Toothaker to decide on the final layout plan.
“I think he’s got a great vision and we were on the same page,” Dosch said. “He (Tootaker) came up with most of the ideas for layout, I offered a few suggestions of things and we made a couple of modifications.”
Currently, Concordia’s football team and tack teams are made up of over 100 students.
Because of this, teams have had been forced to use the weight room at different times throughout the day. Since this work out session separation was occurring, Dosch wanted to make sure the renovated weight room could limit this separation.
“One of the biggest points we were trying to help with was the accessibility portion to try and get more people in (the weight room) at the same time,” Dosch said. “(Currently) the football team has to lift in four different groups and so that really helps. Again we’re not going be able to fit the whole football team in, but it will help alleviate some of those problems that we’ve seen,” Dosch said.
According to Dosch, the weight room project is part of the 2014 Concordia College Wellness Initiative. The initiative’s goal is to “enhance the student fitness experience at Concordia College.”
In order to insure that students and faculty across campus were not only comfortable with the changes but also confident in themselves when they went to the weight room, Dosch helped set up a new website.
According to Dosch the website will teach users how to use the machines properly and teach users various exercises.
Glas hopes that both athletic departments and students gain not only new equipment but also a safer area to workout in.
“Hopefully we will gain the same thing that our students will gain,” Glas said. “That’s new equipment that is more updated and some stations where they have their squat racks and all that stuff on that are more up to date and safe.”
Currently, Toothmaker suspects that approximately 50 non-athletes that use the weight room on a daily bases. Although this is great, Glas hopes the new weight room enables the whole campus to understand the importance of educating the whole body.
“I think we want whole life to be a real thing here on campus it doesn’t do much good to have a very vibrant brain and an unhealthy body,” Glas said. “It’s not a good combination.”
Bachmeier hopes that students and faculty recognize Dosch’s hard work and encourage everyone across campus to utilize the new weight room and use the new improvements to their benefit.
“There were so many things that went into the proposal to make the room a more appealing place a more user friendly place for students and student athletes alike to go and improve themselves physically,” Bachmeier said.
Although the weight rooms renovation will be completed this coming summer, Dosch hopes that students both on teams and not on teams utilize the weight room for their health benefit.
“(I’ve) attempted to eliminate the stigma that only student athletes use the weight room,” Dosch said.
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