Long wait is nearly over for Southeast Missouri State's new weight room

A few weeks ago, Southeast Missouri State football coach Tom Matukewicz's daily routine started to include getting a cup of coffee and heading over to the South Recreation Center on Southeast's campus.

The trip isn't to check in on his players -- they've all left for their winter break -- or to get a head start on a New Year's resolution to work out every day, but rather to see the progress of a long-awaited Christmas gift for him and his fellow Redhawks coaches: an upgraded weight room for their student-athletes.

"I could flip this table over right now I'm so excited," Matukewicz said. "Finally we have something we've been talking about since I was getting interviewed. Thanks to [interim athletic director] Brady [Barke] and lots of other people this is finally a reality. As a football program, I really feel like this is a major brick in our program."

The project had been in discussions for a few years and designs were drawn up when former athletic director Mark Alnutt was still the head of the department. The plans were finalized earlier this year for the project, which Barke estimated to cost between $400,000 and $500,000 when it's completed.

Barke said the timeline has Jan. 19, the first day of the spring semester, as the date when the renovation will be finished.

"I think over the last couple years [assistant AD for external affairs Nate Saverino] and Mark had gone out and tried to get some interest in this and generate some funds," Barke said. "I've tried to be involved in this as I've been over here in the last several months and just trying to explain what it is and what we're trying to do and the level of support that we need. But we're not done yet. This is something that fundraising efforts are still going to be ongoing for this, and likely for other projects, too."

Included in the renovation is turf flooring, LED lighting and several more lifting platforms and weights.

The top priority was to make changes that make the space more efficient to handle larger teams or multiple teams at a time.

For strength coach Ryan Johnson the challenge of scheduling the Redhawks' team workouts was an issue that will be addressed with the renovations.

Most teams want to train somewhere between 6-10 a.m. and 1-6 p.m., with classes scheduled throughout, and while there was already plenty of space to accommodate multiple teams at the same time, there was not enough equipment for each group to have access to the same apparatus.

Progress of the renovations to a weight room on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University Friday, Dec. 18, 2015. (Glenn Landberg)

It also was not possible for other teams to workout at the same time as either football or baseball. Now a smaller team of about 15 people will be able to be in the gym alongside those larger teams.

Matukewicz's squad was broken down into several groups for its weight room sessions, and while there will still be groups, there will be much fewer of them.

"Man, I can't tell you how big that is," Matukewicz said. "There's certain things that are nice and will help in recruiting, but this helps both. It's going to help me develop my players more efficiently, our strength coaches aren't going to have the same workout three times and have the same kind of energy it takes [three times] and now my coaches can be in there.

"We're planning on being in the weight room this spring because before I couldn't devote their time -- three to four hours in there. Now I can devote one hour or two hours in there, so we all plan on being in there and just really looking forward to it."

The platforms used for lifting are set to increase from five to 17, which is expected to greatly improve the effectiveness of the space.

Athletes work out at the facility before the renovation, which has an estimated cost between $400,000 and $500,000. (Capaha Arrow file)

"We have a lot of space in there, a lot of space to be able to do a lot of agility work and things, but we didn't have the amount of equipment in there that we needed," Barke said, "so that's going to be the most notable change aside from the look of it no longer being a basketball floor to now actually being a rubber floor with the addition of the turf."

The turf will run wall to wall -- the full length of the room -- and features the Redhawk logo in the center, with the 17 Hammer Strength Elite lifting racks along the sides.

The previous flooring, which was ripped up last week to commence the project, was a basketball court.

"I think it's a big deal not so much for the performance side of things but for the health of our student-athletes," Johnson said. "I mean, I'm looking at them tearing up that floor, and it was kind of coming up before so we got a glimpse of what it was. You're talking that basketball court is a centimeter deep then it's concrete, so it's like our kids have basically been running on concrete. *... It's not like you're going to run on that one time and all of a sudden you're good to go, but over time that's going to decrease that wear and tear."

The upgraded facility also could have an impact on recruiting efforts. The coaches have been able to show prospective student-athletes the layout of the weight room.

"*...It's hard to recruit a really good football player without a good weight room because a really good football player knows that a weight room is really going to be the difference between him making that next step," Matukewicz said. "When you show them [before] it definitely didn't show that well, and so this is just exciting and hopefully we'll have something nice and shiny we can show our recruits."

Barke said some coaches began to lose faith that the project would ever happen since it had been in the works for some time and Matukewicz said some of the players that were recruited into his program by the previous coaching staff had been told that weight room renovations were coming.

"Things are going to look flashy in there and there's a lot of branding that's going to be going on," Johnson said. "It's going to be a place that our athletes are proud of, and that, I think, is kind of priceless."

Southeast's Success Center, an area where student-athletes can study or meet with members of the department's Academic Services, is housed above the weight room. Barke mentioned it multiple times when discussing the weight room project as something he'd like to improve.

"I think if you look around at what a lot of places [have], there always seems to kind of be that hub, that student-athlete center, so to speak," Barke said. "And I think we have that over with our Success Center and our weight room area, but I think [it's important] to try to continue to find ways to enhance that space. We have upstairs some really nice academic space, but the layout of it isn't ideal. We could benefit from a little bit more tutor and study room type of space that would make it a little bit more friendly.

"We have other facility improvements from baseball to softball, track, tennis, a lot of those places all have things that are kind of on our radar that we really would like to get to that place, so I think over the next several months we'll really try to sit down and look at those and prioritize them and try to get a plan to see how maybe we can start to tackle some of those needs that we have."