Sebo Center Tour Reflection

“It’s a terrific addition to the Bowling Green campus, and its impact on our student-athletes is going to be tremendous,” said Christopher. “This is a building that will help all 425 student-athletes and 18 teams.”

On Thursday September 14, our class visited the Sebo Athletic Center located north east of campus. “The Sebo Athletic Center provides expanded facilities for both, along with meeting and office space for BGSU athletics”(bgsu.edu). The 42,500-square-foot center is named for retired businessman Robert Sebo, the 1958 BGSU who gave the lead gift of $3.5 million for its construction. There are many different aspects of the facility but according to Greg Christopher, “the first-floor strength and conditioning room and sports medicine facilities are the two key areas in the building.” At about 9,400 square feet, the strength and conditioning room is nearly double the size of what has been the main training area, on the stadium’s west side. Among the room’s features are a floor made of recycled rubber tires and roughly $150,000 worth of weight equipment.
A men’s and a women’s locker room are also on the first floor of the three-story building, whose corridor connects it with the home football locker room and offices on the east side of the stadium. The Sebo Center is not just for football it is also open to all the other 18 sport teams at Bowling Green State University. Even though the Sebo Center is connected to the football field, all the sports teams use the weight room and the rehabilitation room. In the treatment and rehabilitation spaces include a hydrotherapy room with hot and cold tubs and an underwater treadmill in a whirlpool with resistant jets.
On the second floor of the Sebo Center one can find conference rooms and the athletic administrative offices. According to our tour guide, he stated that, “if I could have constructed the building, I would have connected the administrative offices and football offices more closely together.” Although this may not be a recommendation talked about in class, I believe that it does have an effect of the overall effectiveness of the building. The tour guide mentioned that it is a hassle to have to walk down the stairs, across the hall just to get to the administrative building and could have been prevented by connecting or putting the offices all on one floor.
Another aspect of the building management felt could work better if constructed differently was; a stair way for football players from the film room to locker room and easier access to the suits. This related to the discussions we had in class about how new facility trends are always evolving and never as fully up to date as they would like with the constant improvements. Some current trends about the Sebo Center that I found interesting were the magnetic strips on the keys. These keys can allow access to certain rooms for certain people can be turned off at anytime through technology. The tour guide had said this is a big step in technology for them because it is not only easier, but safer too.

Although the Sebo Athletic Center does meet the needs of the athletic teams at BGSU but when comparing the Sebo to a professional team’s training/team locker facility, BGSU’s cannot compare. The Cleveland Browns Training and Administrative Complex is located in Berea, Ohio, on 13 acres of land. The building, which originally opened in August 1991, was renovated in the spring of 1999, while further renovations and expansion commenced during the 2009 offseason. The most recent improvements include an expanded locker room, a lobby restoration that pays tribute to Browns’ Hall of Famers and a complete renovation of the cafeteria, video room, and meet- ing rooms, including a new 2,300 sq. ft. auditorium featuring 120 theater seats. Existing features in the state-of-the-art facility include a field house of 60,000 sq. ft. with a 70-yard field, a 3,100 sq. ft. athletic training room and a restaurant-style kitchen for meal preparation. The complex also hosts three regulation-size natural grass practice fields ideal for year-round football operations, including the team’s training camps.