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Kent State puts over $3M into new athletic training facilities
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: September 12, 2016
When the Kent State University Golden Flashed football team kicked off its 2016 season at Dix Stadium against the North Carolina A&T Aggies, they were backed by a new, state-of-the-art training facility attached to the university’s M.A.C. Center.
It is quite a step up, said Trent Stratton, Kent State’s head athletic trainer.
The old training facilities for the university’s student athletes, located under the Dix stadium bleachers were, to put it kindly, “sub-standard,” said Stratton.
But now, he said, the school has opened their brand-new, $3.1 million Kent State Athletic Training and Education Center. It will be home to both the training and medical facilities for student-athletes and a classroom environment for students in the athletic training program.
The new space is 10,000 square feet, built on two floors. The current 2,000-square-foot athletic training facility will also keep functioning.
“We are very excited to get this new facility. The state-of-the-art equipment will benefit our student-athletes, and it will also be used in research,” said Stratton whose official title at the school is “assistant athletic trainer, sports medicine.” He said that he has been with the university for 14 years, the last seven as head trainer.
“The old facility is a shared space,” he said. “The new one will be private and professional.”
That excitement was echoed by Janet Kittell, deputy director of athletics of internal operations and the athletic department’s senior women administrator (SWA).
“We have always placed student athletes’ health and safety foremost,” said Kittell. “But our space was inadequate and outdated. We are very excited to be adjacent to the MAC, so that our services will be available to all of our student athletes.” The school has about 425 students who participate in varsity sports.
Stratton said that the new location puts the athletic training facilities “closer to the students, and closer to basketball and wrestling. It is off Midway, accessed by parking lots R11, R3 and Taylor.”
The new equipment, said Kittell, will “put us on the cutting edge, as opposed to just adequate.”
According to both Kittell and Stratton, who put the plan together along with university architects, the new facility will house new equipment that will include three pools, cryotherapy, an antigravity treadmill, and much more.
Stratton said the three pools will be “one cold, one warm and one with an underwater treadmill.” They are manufactured by HydroWorx and are set off by themselves in a bright “pool” room on the second floor.
The antigravity treadmill, said Stratton, is made by AlterG and is a new concept in treadmills. The runner is suspended by straps above the treadmill and the machine puts a variable amount of the runner’s weight on the surface.
“You can take as much as 90 percent of an athlete’s body weight off the lower extremities,” he said. That allows work on gait, or if you have an injury, the athlete can get a cardio workout in with less impact.”
Another “new toy” is a Vision Coach interactive light board which trainers will “use for concussions, balance, and to accelerate rehab,” among other functions, he said. Vision Coach is a training device that uses the athlete’s vision to establish concussion baselines and post-concussion testing, according to the company website. The machine costs about $20,000.
Stratton said that the upgraded facilities will also feature a number of “small improvements,” including two small locker rooms, Microsoft Surface Pros to “show and explain rehabs,” more office space, seven more treatment tables, and an increase in taping stations from three to 10.
One piece of equipment that the department has not secured at the time of this writing is a X-Ray machine, but Stratton said that they have reached out to local medical facilities to see if one of them will donate that equipment.
Training is only one aspect of all of this new equipment, said Stratton, who added that that he “is looking forward to collaborating with other departments in research.”
Kittle said that, ultimately, funding for the project will come from “backfilling” fundraising by the athletic departments, but that the university itself fronted the department the money to get the construction done through the office of university president Beverly Warren.
There will be an open house for anyone who would like to tour the new facility on Oct. 1 from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. in conjunction with the school’s homecoming celebrations as a part of the Blue and Gold Tour.