On January 13, 1997, SGA President Angela Nix presided at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newest landmark facility on campus, the $18 million, 150,000 square foot Student Recreation Center (SRC). Long anticipated by the student body, the SRC, after opening, quickly became one of the most popular venues on the west end of campus, effectively replacing Christenbury Gym, a 1951 facility located on the east end. To “ooohs and ahhhs,” the SRC showcased an array of novel events including the inaugural “polar bear party” at the 30- by 40-foot outdoor pool, plus aerobics classes, martial arts instruction, and a trade show showcasing club sports and fitness activities. Within the first few hours, over 1,000 students visited; by the end of the day, over 2,000. With understandable hyperbole, the vice chancellor of student life, Alfred Matthews, declared “This is the finest student recreation center for purely student use in the U.S. The ECU students deserve it.” Grand opening week climaxed with a Sunday afternoon open house giving the community a chance to see ECU’s new center for fitness and athletic training. Shortly after its formal opening, the facility began hosting basketball, volleyball, badminton, and racquetball intramural games on a regular basis. It also sponsored an indoor screening of the movie Jaws, shown to students floating on rafts and inner tubes in the indoor pool.
At its heart, the SRC includes a six-court arena accommodating basketball, volleyball, and badminton. In addition, the center offers seven racquetball courts, a squash court, and a 27-foot rock climbing wall. On its east and west wings, it houses a 12,000 square foot weight training and cardiovascular center with computerized stair climbers, treadmills, rowing machines, and stationary bicycles, and recumbent bicycles. The SRC maintains an indoor cycling zone, an indoor running track, a mind and body zone, a resistance training zone, a functional cross training zone, three multipurpose studios, and a cardio zone with premier equipment featuring access to Netflix and cable tv. Wi-Fi pervades the facility.
Handicapped accessible from the start, the SRC, unlike Christenbury, soon sponsored special events such as wheel-chair basketball for physically challenged students, staff, and faculty. While financed in part by student fees in place since 1991, the SRC also offered memberships to faculty, staff, retired faculty, and recent alumni and trustees, making it a campus Mecca for exercise, athletic competitions, club sports, and other activities. The center has also hosted food drives, Halloween parties, blood drives, and even political campaign rallies. In the two decades since its grand opening, it has seen over a million member-visits by those intent upon balancing their campus experience, mind and body. Not surprisingly, Athletic Business Magazine awarded the SRC its prestigious “Facility of Merit” designation.
In addition to first-rate recreational facilities, the SRC is one of the more architecturally unique and attractive buildings on campus. While the product of the dreams and efforts of many, it was an integral component of Chancellor Richard Eakin’s vision to see ECU grow in ways that enhanced its original beauty and balance as a campus. At another level, the new Student Recreation Center realized one of the longest standing campus desiderata: a dedicated facility facilitating student fitness and intramural athletics. Already on one of the earliest sketches of the original campus, a student gymnasium appeared. With the Student Recreation Center, that dream of a campus fitness center became a reality.
Other campus additions of the late 1990s coinciding with the grand opening of the SRC were the opening of Joyner Library’s Sonic Plaza and the Bate Building, and planning for another new academic building, the Science and Technology Building. Eakin’s administration also brought the campus more closely together than ever via installation of an extensive network of fiber optic cable. Complementing these innovative initiatives, the grand opening of the state of the art SRC helped ready ECU for the new century ahead.
More about the Student Recreation Center.
Sources
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Additional Related Material
Nighttime shot of the Student Recreation Center and its landscaping.
Main entrance of the Student Recreation Center, built on the East Carolina University campus in 1994.
Citation Information
Title: Student Recreattion Center, Grand Opening, 1997
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 10/5/2020