Minnesota hats off to thy!
Rotarians and guests gathered at the University of Minnesota Athletes Village for a Vocational Day meeting Thursday, May 17. We enjoyed a short presentation on the new facilities along with box lunches, then headed out for tours of the training facilities.
Click on the link below for more on the meeting...
It was an elite day at the sparkling new University of Minnesota Athletes Village. We where greeted by John Flynn, Jake Johnson, Susan Johnson, Marty Kupper and Kip Peterson. Bjorn Freudenthal helped us check in and grab our box lunches.
After a quick lunch in the former football meeting room, President Elect John Flynn and his whistle opened the meeting by welcoming the numerous guests excited to tour the facility and those who helped with the meeting.Michael Opitz presented a thoughtful Invocation of the Athletes Prayer. John thanked Bill McReavy for arranging this exclusive tour. Bill then introduced us to Dusty Clements, Senior Associate Athletic Director of Development at the University of Minnesota. Dusty came to Minnesota via Boise State and University of Oklahoma. Dusty described the previous facility, which it outgrew almost immediately in the early 1980s.
The new $190 million facility, of which $166 million has been raised, opened on Jan. 18. The old facility is being remodeled. Dusty did a quick review of what we were going to tour, which supports 25 athletic programs, 300 staff from the Life Center, Nutrition Center of Excellence, Football, Basketball Centers, etc. Dusty fielded questions on funding—they received no money from the State of Minnesota—to graduation rates of athletes and the strength in the women's programs.
We split off into four tour groups. The guide on my tour was Joe Quinn, Associate Director of Fundraising, and a football letterman from 1999. Our tour began in the Land O’Lakes Life Center, which focuses on educating the athletes on life after athletics, and then onto the Lindahl Center of Learning (study hall), which is open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Next stop the spacious dining hall of Nutrition Center of Excellence, which is open to the public for breakfast and lunch.We moved onto the football facility, which featured a stadium-like meeting room with numerous slogans from "The Ball is the Program" to "Row the Boat"... you get the point. We where told that Coach P.J. Fleck does not allow his staff and players to use the elevators. The football lounge and locker room was very spacious, with the lounge overlooking the cavernous indoor practice facility with numerous cameras located throughout the field for viewing. The weight room was huge with every type of work out equipment you could think of.
The double decker basketball courts had an abundant amount of natural light. Outside the basketball locker room there is a "Wall of Fame and Shame," which featured press clippings of basketball players doing good works in their communities and shame of arrests. Very powerful notice.
Overall it is an premier facility that the University and its alumni should be proud of and look forward to top flight programs and student athletes emerging from these walls.
Then the bus was loaded and headed back to the Edina Country Club.
