Picture yourself in a walk-in closet with nothing there, pretty spacious; now just add a computer desk, some training equipment and a lot of sweaty athletics. Not so roomy anymore. Yet that is exactly what the sport medicine staff and trainers have been dealing with during their brief stay at the Ornelas Health and Physical Education Center.
“It’s a little crowded. We have all the athletes come in at one time,” freshman Sports Medicine/Broadcast Journalism major Ysma Smith said.
For the past year the Tyler Junior College sports medi- cine program has had to find refuge in an old Ornelas free weight gym/racquet ball court while their new facility is being built. The temporary home has caused problems for the staff. Student trainers have complained of overcrowding when multiple athletes from soccer and football show up for treatment and the trainers have found problems with keeping the room clean because of the weight room’s old rubber floors. Assistant Athletic Trainer Travis Gray’s biggest concern with the temporary training office was the lack of space as well, but Gray also found problems with sounds echoing in the room.
“And the fact that it is a racquet ball room, noise bounces off the walls,” Gray said. “And it can get pretty loud in there and you are ready to go at about 2 or 3 o’ clock with a pounding head- ache.”
The training staff is not the only ones suffering. During the trainers stay, the Ornelas Nautilus weight, room 212, has been working overtime, trying to not only accommodate TJC athletes and classes, but also provide a place where TJC students can work out. The students have had to take a back seat to these programs.
Freshman Matthew Broadbent, a Health and Kinesiology major who tries to get to the weight room 2 to 3 times a week, was asked to leave the weight room to accommodate for a class. Broadbent thought it would be a great idea to have a separate weight room, in the event that if a class or a sports team (i.e. vol- leyball, baseball and basketball) needed the weight room, the stu- dents would be able to leave and finish their workout in the other weight room. Being asked to leave without warning is not the only problem students have found with the room. Others have experienced overcrowding.
Sophomore and Radiology Technology major Lynn Jackson found that during the middle of the day she has had to deal with overcrowding. Jackson said she has learned to work around it, but still wishes the school had a second weight room.
“In case I was in there when the team came in, I would have somewhere else to go to finish lifting,” Jackson said.
Due to all the problems caused by the construction, the training staff is excited to move into their new home.
“We’re going to have a lot more space to do our job,” fresh man Sports Medicine major Mario Martinez said. ” It’s going to be a whole lot easier to keep clean.”
The facility will provide the student trainers with their own personal locker room, three personal offices for the staff and a wet room for the coolers.
“The new one is going to be bigger than our old one which was already probably the biggest one in the conference,” Grey
said. Nov. 1, but there is hope for construction to be done by mid or late October.
