OGDEN — With just a few days to go before Weber State’s football home opener against Cal Poly, construction crews were putting the finishing touches on the athletic department’s new crown jewel, the Barbara and Rory Youngberg Football Center.
The brand-new, 27,000-square-foot facility, which will be available to the entire athletics department and not just the football team, has all the bells and whistles needed to support a program that has been on the rise under head coach Jay Hill.
To Hill, the new home for the Wildcats is “outstanding.”
“The players are excited, the administration is excited, I’m excited. It’s a big deal for us,” said Hill, who coached Weber State to a second-consecutive Big Sky title last season with a 10-3 regular-season record.
Not only will the $16 million facility house the football locker room and the athletic department’s weight room, the football coaches’ offices and a 125-seat auditorium for team meetings, it will also be a focal point of the fan experience at Stewart Stadium. Fans will be encouraged to enter through the plaza, known as Sark’s Boys Gateway, to get the full effect.
The football team moved into the new building less than two weeks ago. As has become commonplace in the college football landscape, the team produced a social media video of the players’ reaction to their new home. The unveiling was quite a thrill to say the least, according to quarterback Jake Constantine.
“Obviously, the new locker room is way bigger and (has) more technology to go with it,” said Constantine, a junior who quarterbacked the Wildcats in a narrow defeat at San Diego State in last week’s opener. While the Wildcats’ locker room doesn’t feature the sleeping pods that helped LSU’s new digs go viral, it’s a top-notch space for the players.
According to Hill, the locker room, with over 100 individual locker spaces for players, was modeled after the lockers that the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens use. Hill also commented that several NFL scouts have remarked that the Wildcats now have a better locker room than they do at the professional level.
While consulting on what he would like to see in the facility, Hill took inspiration from the football facilities at the University of Utah, where he coached under Kyle Whittingham, and at Utah State, where he got a personal tour of the building from then-head coach Matt Wells. The result is more than gratifying to everyone in the program.
Just outside the locker room, the players will make a seamless entry onto the field with a garage door-type of opening that leads directly onto the track and then onto the field at Stewart Stadium. Add smoke and pyrotechnics and it should be a dramatic entrance for the home team.
While the football team will be the primary occupant of the building, with the upper level being almost completely dedicated to the coaches’ office spaces, which double as position meeting rooms for the players, the entire athletics program is welcome to use the auditorium and its massive projector screen for team meetings. The state-of-the-art weight room is also available for all Wildcat student-athletes.
Interim athletic director Tim Crompton says the new building will alleviate many of the space issues that used to bedevil the Wildcats’ various programs. The facility is expected to be a source of pride for the student-athletes, according to Crompton.
“Really, ultimately, it’s really, really nice,” said Crompton of the facility.
Even though the Wildcats have this program-changing facility in the north end of their stadium, the expectations don’t change, according to Hill, who was referred to as the best coach in FCS by Constantine and Crompton.
“We always have the expectations to win every game and quite frankly, once the ball is kicked off, a building doesn’t affect the games. It doesn’t,” said Hill. “It’s still football and facilities don’t win games, players and coaches getting players to do the right things win games.”
Weber State will debut the new look at Stewart Stadium, which also has added two new video boards at both end zones, on Saturday at 6 p.m. against Cal Poly.