SEPTEMBER 17, 2009 ISSUE
Welcome to the (New) Rock
ASU Debuts New Kidd Brewer Stadium and Athletic Facilities
Construction crews hired by ASU scramble to complete finishing touches to the new Kidd Brewer Stadium and Wendell H. “Dell” Murphy, Jr. Field last week in preparation for the ASU football home opener versus McNeese State. During the game, ASU officials honored the Murphy family on the field, recognizing the $1 million contribution Dell Murphy, Jr. made to create the new playing surface. Unfortunately, the Mountaineers fell five points short of a victory last Saturday, however fans still received a show—both from the valiant comeback of embattled quarterback Armanti Edwards and from the sheer grandeur of ASU’s new sports facilities. Photos by Patrick Pitzer
If ASU football head coach Jerry Moore wants to impress a potential blue-chip linebacker, he simply needs to show off the Mountaineers’ new weight room, locker room and athletic training facility.
If Moore wants to impress that same recruit’s parents, he’ll show them the study hall rooms in the same facility.
Prospects need only to look in the seven-story athletic complex at Kidd Brewer Stadium to understand how important athletics is to ASU.
The complex, which has been under construction for three years, isn’t just for the three-time national championship football team, but it should certainly help keep the Mountaineers among the nation’s elite programs.
“Only time is going to tell [if it helps with recruiting],” Moore said. “I don’t know of anybody else that we go head-to-head with that has the facilities like that.
“When you roll the academics of our school in with it and if we continue to have a tradition of winning and playoff participation, it’s got a great future,” Moore added.
The complex has a locker room—complete with stone on the wall, big wooden lockers and photos of the players atop their lockers—that rivals that of major BCS programs.
Athletes from all ASU sports teams will use the almost 9,000 square foot weight room that is located on the second floor.
And at almost 7,500 square feet, it’s three times the size of the current locker room.
The same can be said of the new weight room, which is almost 9,000 square feet.
With only a few movie theaters in Boone, it would be hard to reserve a screen for the entire ASU football program to watch its Friday night flick. Instead, there’s a large theater-styled room, complete with screen, in the new Kidd Brewer Stadium complex that the team will use instead.
“There are three things you need when you’re recruiting: a school to recruit them to, a place to get a good education and the facilities,” ASU Athletic Director Charlie Cobb said. “No one is going to have a better training room. No one will have a better weight room. We have the facilities to get [athletes] here and give them a chance to win.”
The facility includes a 600-seat club level, 18 suites that fans can rent and more room to facilitate the larger media hordes that the Mountaineers continue to see on game days.
There is a hydrotherapy room outfitted with treadmills on the bottom of rehab pools, both hot and cold. The second floor has meeting rooms for each position on the football team, complete with televisions to watch and study film.
ASU Athletic Director Charlie Cobb points out other features in Kidd Brewer Stadium. Behind Cobb is the new athletic facility, complete with club level seating, luxury boxes and media facilities.
And there’s a new walkway for the players to enter the stadium during games.
Moore and his staff will have offices in the building, along with other athletic department employees. The football staff is moving from the cramped Owens Fieldhouse, which is located past one of the field’s end zones.
“I was talking to one of the Dallas Cowboys scouts and mentioned to him that we’d have one of the better facilities in I-AA football and he said, ‘Jerry, this will be one of the top 40 facilities in the United States,’” Moore said. “Every day that I see it being completed, I believe that is true.”
The team used the locker room facility during Saturday’s 40-35 loss to McNeese State and personnel will continue to move into the building’s offices this week.
Cobb is happy that the facility will be used by all the athletes at ASU.
“I’m not sure we ever built it with the mentality of saying we want to be better than someone else. For us, we had some needs and we had some wants and we have some space to grow,” Cobb said. “I know the places that are going to impact the kids are quantum leaps ahead of what we have now.”
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