Side of Design

Beyond Athletics: Driving Enrollment, Wellness, and Campus Identity in Higher Education

• BWBR • Episode 52

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Athletic facilities aren't just about sports anymore. As BWBR's Architectural Design Manager Kyle Lunke and Principal Craig Peterson discuss in our latest Side of Design episode, these spaces drive enrollment, enhance student wellness, and strengthen institutional identity.

 Venues that welcome fans on game day help foster an incredible sense of community and energy—but the benefits go on long after the game clock runs out. That’s why we were excited to talk with Kyle and Craig to gain insights into how thoughtful design transforms athletic facilities into dynamic hubs serving entire campus communities.

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Matthew Gerstner:

This is Side of Design from BWBR, a podcast discussing all aspects of design with knowledge leaders from every part of the industry. Hello and welcome to Side of Design from BWBR. I'm your host, matt Gerstner. On this episode, we'll be exploring athletic facilities for higher education, as these spaces can play an increasingly important role in supporting the goals and growth of their institutions. Joining the conversation from BWBR Architectural Design Manager Kyle Lunke and Principal Craig Peterson, thank you for joining me today. Thank you, good to be here. Good to be here, matt. Thanks. I'm going to get us started with the question that a lot of people may be asking themselves why are athletic facilities, why are these spaces important to higher education and what kind of impact can investing in them have for recruiting or enrollment?

Craig Peterson:

I think we've heard from clients before in talking about athletic facilities in higher ed, where the need to upgrade or to re-envision how these work and look has a lot to do with incoming students having terrific facilities even in their high schools, and so just simply to keep up with that as a means of recruitment. If we're talking about students not the student athlete, but the student oftentimes these kinds of spaces are super important for the student, as they imagine and look at these as amenities that become a part of their student life. I mean student experience, whether that's an approach to wellness maybe just, you know, places to work out and be improving their overall wellness or simply a part of intramural activities, which again can be part of even the social and cultural aspects of the student experience.

Kyle Lunke:

You know, I'd say any business or company that is investing a great deal of money in a new building or the renovation of an existing building or a remodel of a space they're going to have it as their top goal or one of their top goals to be able to attract talent. And once you have the talent, retain the talent. Right Now, I would say, after doing I've done a number of athletic related projects, and after doing one you very quickly realize just how important recruiting and retaining is, not only to the individual sports programs or the athletic department as a whole but also for the institution.

Kyle Lunke:

I mean there really is a direct and notable correlation between the success that athletic plays at the college and enrollment and driving greater numbers in enrollment. So yeah, recruiting and retainment always top of mind in enrollment.

Craig Peterson:

So yeah, recruiting and retainment always top of mind. One thing maybe to even tag on to is the notion that for some they could look at this, the things we're talking about and say, you know?

Craig Peterson:

why, are athletics so big a thing Like? What about all the other aspects of colleges and universities and commitments to education and so forth? And I think that's all true. I think one of the things to remember with athletics is the facilities themselves stand out because they are so specific and so fine-tuned to the activities within, and so there is a certain level of commitment to the facility. That has to happen. You could say the same thing, I think, for fine arts and especially performing arts, like the theater that supports music or other kinds of you know, acting and other things. Those are fine-tuned spaces as well. So I think athletics, unfairly or fairly, gets a lot of attention in the sense of man we're putting so much commitment to, especially financially, to this one aspect of college and university life. But I think it has a lot to do with the type of building we're talking about.

Matthew Gerstner:

There are a couple of things that jumped out to me as you all were talking. One was how these facilities that we're building aren't necessarily just athletic facilities, athletic facilities. There's potential that other aspects to these facilities that benefit the students in other degree programs. The one that comes to mind for me is sports medicine.

Craig Peterson:

I think the crossover with academic disciplines could just be the approach to student wellness. You know, physical health but also mental health, and with some of these facilities we've seen space dedicated to that aspect too, where, for example, components of the student health arena within the institution are also co-located within some of these athletic facilities, which it really addresses the more holistic approach, not just physically in terms of placing spaces together, but as an expression of that commitment to a holistic approach to health that combines all these aspects together and it really does become an expression of overall health.

Kyle Lunke:

I think that is a fairly recent trend. That we're seeing is not only physical health but mental health. You're seeing more and more of that. The stigma around mental health has lifted over the last several years and now we're seeing that more dedicated space for meditation, dedicated space for recovery, just the space to go to just chill out for a little bit. I think back when I was in in college and just the the stress that is put on students and then, on top of it, student athletes. So you're not only having to perform at school, but you're also having to perform, you know, on the field or on the court or wherever right, right, related to athletics. That's a lot and it's just a weird time too in your life. I mean, you're just there's a lot going on, and so to have these spaces right To be able to go and just relax for a little bit and relieve some stress and anxiety You're seeing that more and more.

Craig Peterson:

Even on more of a lighter note, things like coffee shops, juice bars, places to study, so that the place becomes a place to be and also sort of enhance a sense of inclusivity in a space like that because in reality I mean athletics, especially highly competitive athletics is a very exclusive situation. I there's only a very few people that are extremely talented in some of these endeavors and so oftentimes the spaces can have that sense of exclusiveness. But if you're able to bring the functionalities that really are places of welcoming and an invitation to all students, that can really enhance that overall sense of yeah, this is a building that serves everyone.

Kyle Lunke:

Getting back to the physical health and then also now bringing in mental health and that being critical for athletes to perform at the highest degree. Do y'all watch the quarterback Netflix with the followup Patrick Mahomes and Kirk Cousins? And one thing that struck me about Kirk Cousins is how much he worked on his mental health Hours of just really making sure that he's in the right mind space to perform well out on the field, day in and day out. Working on your mental health. It's huge.

Matthew Gerstner:

It's something that I think most of us could benefit from too, and specifically those scenes Kyle was when he'd bring out his notebook, his journal and he would sit there and discuss that stuff with his sports psychologist and go through these things. That's an admirable thing.

Kyle Lunke:

For our listeners. I'd be curious to hear more about what can we do to give the client a product that leverages recruiting and retainment to the highest degree. I'd be curious to dive into this a little bit more and to me, thinking about recruiting and retaining, that's kind of in two different buckets, right? Recruiting that is your initial impression. Recruiting that is your initial impression.

Kyle Lunke:

If you can imagine a recruit, a prospective student athlete coming to the facility and being given a tour, where are those awe-inspiring moments throughout the tour that can really excite and entice? That's really what it's all about, right, that initial handshake with the athletic facility. And so I think you know you go through a tour and maybe that last stop is a recruiting lounge and you're there with the recruiter, with the head coach, and maybe it's the athletic director and you're sitting there and us as designers, we can be able to really help the client and they craft a space that that can have that inspiration perfectly branded. I think maybe it's perched up high and there's all this glass and you can see the panoramic view of the campus and then maybe in the distance you see the game day arena or stadium.

Kyle Lunke:

You know those types of things really make a big difference and it helps make that perspective student athlete think, wow, this is this, is it, this is where I want to go. I'm going to cancel all my other tours with the you know the university down the road because this is it, this is exciting, this is very exciting. And then and then to finish this off, so that's the recruiting side of the retaining side. Now, in my mind, once you get the talent and you want to keep that talent, the retainment side of design is more about functionality and making it as convenient as possible for all of its users. I think by doing that, this is like their second home. They are going to be spending a lot of time in these facilities and so to make it as convenient as possible. That all helps in the day to day. And, yeah, I like it here. This is great. I don't have to walk 300 feet down a corridor to drop off my laundry.

Matthew Gerstner:

The word that comes to mind is convenience, you know, to your life, your daily life, of what you're trying to pursue and achieve, and there's nothing in that, then that makes it difficult.

Craig Peterson:

The convenience angle plays out in terms of just the flow of moving from space to space, as Kyle was describing. It's also super important from that planning perspective in terms of the athletic program and I mean these are, these are teams, these are sports and teams that are operating practice schedules on a really tight time frame. Like these things have to work. You can't be wasting time because you only have so much time in a day to run your practice and so forth and share the facility with other teams and so forth. So these are highly orchestrated schedules going on inside a building. So convenience is sure it makes life easy, but it's also kind of critical to just the way things work. I think we've seen, you know, wellness centers and so forth supporting the general student are really successful if they're located in a way that is kind of central to the campus. It's a place that you as a student are walking by or walking through, whether you're using it or not, you're experiencing it on the daily basis and thus, as a result, the likelihood that a student will engage with it in a meaningful way is much higher versus having it far flung way off, you know, on the edge of campus, far from the res halls. The idea of convenience again can impact the student in a big way.

Craig Peterson:

Yeah, you think about some of those practice facilities and competitive arenas and such.

Craig Peterson:

The longstanding traditional court space, I think, is a prime example of the multi-use kind of court. You know it can volleyball, basketball, blah, blah, blah. But I think, more recently emerging, becomes the field house, and by that we're talking about the large-scale facility which is, you know, at the scale of a soccer field or a football field, has high versatility and then, if it's supplemented with turf, you, you know, are able to replicate your playing conditions, you know, in the off season or just simply in the day-to-day. Now, all of a sudden, an indoor facility with lights, you know that that can operate from six in the morning till midnight if you're folding in ear murals and other things like that. So, and the other kicker with with turf is and that's not necessarily a new technology when we talk about artificial turf but the modern, contemporary turf is far, far advanced than the old days of simply carpet over concrete floors In terms of low maintenance, obviously, but also the replication of turf as natural. I mean, it is sometimes now hard to even tell the difference on that surface.

Kyle Lunke:

I think flexibility is key, but I will say that, especially with the renovation of an existing facility, you might not have the luxury of that kind of flexibility because you're you're landlocked and we don't have the opportunity to expand. I think about if you have a bunch of locker rooms at a lower level and you're renovating to bring locker rooms up to today's standard. You got to think about ADA and bringing that up to code, the present and future needs from the client as well as possibility of future programs. Needs from the client as well as possibility of future programs. You're hearing a lot more about certain programs that they don't have but they might have here in the future.

Kyle Lunke:

So accommodating all of that in a footprint, an existing footprint, is really challenging. So one you know one tactic or one strategy to alleviate that is you have all these locker rooms. Well, maybe there's a couple locker rooms that can share a wet area and that frees up a lot of space and pairing certain sports teams with each other that are off seasons. Let's say it's women's basketball and another locker room that is women's soccer right, they're on off-season and so if they're sharing a wet area, there might be some overlap, but hopefully not too much. Just by doing that you can save a lot of score footage and try to meet all the needs that the client is asking for.

Matthew Gerstner:

Yeah, I can testify to that. Out in my community where I live, the local high school teamed up with the city and they actually constructed an athletic facility that has the indoor pool, weight training facilities, cardio facilities and it is now part of the community center, technically just being dedicated to the high school, where there's a lot of downtime for the local pool, and so they've got open swim, they've got aqua aerobics, they're running all sorts of different programs in there. That also helps benefit the maintenance and the upkeep and the cost of having the facility, because local residents can purchase a membership, you know, and it's severely reduced in a lot of cases the cost of that for a resident out here to be able to afford that over what it might cost you at a private gym facility. There's a lot of that happening. So, like I said, I can even see that here in our local high school.

Matthew Gerstner:

A couple of the questions that I have kind of relate to each other and they're all kind of based around equity. How are you navigating, finding balance? You know, equitable balance? I mean specifically let's talk about gender equity, title IX between various programs within an institution, or just the equity of having a space that is for athletes. But what about the students? What about the other? You know the students and their athletic facilities. How are you finding that balance to these designs?

Kyle Lunke:

Title IX. You, you know that's always in the conversation. That's a that's a really big deal and that is the right for all student athletes, men and women, to have equal opportunity, and so it's always in the conversation and we go to great lengths to ensure that women are getting the same opportunities as the men, like I think of one example where we're designing a basketball facility for both men and women and every square inch was considered. If we're making any adjustments to the plan for the men, we need to make sure that we're making those same adjustments for women. Any sort of amenity that is being asked for men, those amenities will be a part of the plan for women as well, even down to views, making sure that the views out of the facility are as equal as we can make them. So, yeah, it's a big deal. It's always a part of the conversation and we take it seriously.

Craig Peterson:

Yeah, and maybe to just touch on equity in general, I think the environment, the quality, the impact of the space can have a tremendous impact. You know, can really affect a student's impression of the space. I mean, we talked a little bit about this in recruiting in terms of you know that first impression For a student athlete, you want them to walk in and say, oh man, I can see myself succeeding here, I can see myself contributing to a team that is going to win championships, the facilities are going to support this as exciting space, et cetera, et cetera. First for a student, you you might say that the you would like the impression to be I can see myself here, I can see myself in this space and it feels comfortable to me, and so design can have an impact in that, in that way.

Kyle Lunke:

As it relates to equity and inclusion. I also think you know you get the. You have the three big sports, uh, football, basketball and, especially in this region in the Midwest here, hockey. They're the sports that are generating a lot of revenue, so they do get a lot of attention. But it's also important to make sure that other sports programs are getting attention as well. A lot of institutions will spend a great deal of money on the three big sports, but also on all the other sports as well, and creating a facility where all can feel included, like I think of what we did at Athletes Village for the University of Minnesota, and creating what is called the Center for Excellence. That's for all student athletes, and so there's a big cafeteria, servery, dining hall that is used by all, dining hall that is used by all a bunch of study spaces, offices, multi-use spaces that can be used by all student-athletes, not just the big three right?

Matthew Gerstner:

Are there any trends or innovations you're seeing within regard to athletic spaces in general?

Kyle Lunke:

as far as design goes, I don't know if this is a new trend, but it's a trend that just continues to build and build and build, and that is technology integration, a lot of different tools out there, training tools as it relates to virtual reality for both the coaching staff but also for athletes during practice. That's one that I wanted to bring up, because you just continued to talk on how to make the facility the best that it can be when it comes to technology integration and just having an overall immersive experience for its users in the building and also open it up to the community. These multi-use spaces and being able to open up the doors and have the community come in, that's big, it's a benefit to the community and it's also a benefit to the athletic programs.

Craig Peterson:

I might add to a couple of things I don't I don't know if you'd technically call them trends maybe more, more expectations with a lens toward the student One. One of these would be the, the expectation of the quality of the space, and I'm thinking a lot of, like the cardio or strengths wellness space daylight views, high ceilings, a place that not only you want to be but you're there and connecting with other people. It's a place to gather. I think we've been. I can think of several instances where we've been called into for projects and we take a tour and we go to the existing, you know, weight room or cardio or strength facility and it's in a windowless space in the basement and frankly, it's not a place anyone wants to be. Even if you're committed to being in shape, let's say you just don't want to be there.

Craig Peterson:

So I think that's one thing that's always at the forefront. The other would be too, I think the acknowledgement which is an acknowledgement both of the wellness program that institutions might run, but it is impactful through the facility as well is that acknowledging. There are many ways to be active. You know, it isn't just lifting weights or being on a treadmill or on a running track. You have a wide, you know, for example, an array of studios that provide different ways again to be active, just as one example. So I think a lot of times the facilities are being asked to do a lot, and that's a good thing.

Matthew Gerstner:

There are a lot of great things in there that I heard and the use of technology, the design and use of daylight. You're talking about a few things here that, if you're opening it up to other classes being able to use spaces, you're talking about offsetting the cost of some of these resources in a lot of ways and making those dollars go further. So that's just huge. I mean, that's fantastic for everybody. So we have hit on a lot of different things today, but is there anything that you can think of that we haven't touched on, that you might want to talk about?

Craig Peterson:

I think it's. Another interesting aspect of the design of athletic facilities is simply the architecture of the athletic facility. You know how does the facility look and feel, and that goes for the exterior, interior, all of that. But it's really, I think, a unique design challenge or opportunity.

Craig Peterson:

When we talk about higher ed, because we have a campus, we have a campus context, we have a series of buildings and outdoor spaces that are intertwined and integrated with each other to create an overall sense of place. That is really, really critical to the experience of the institution. And so when we talk about athletic facilities, it's really critical to think about how does this building then integrate with the campus so that it feels like it's a fit, that it's contributing to the other spaces and buildings. And it can be a unique challenge because a lot of times these buildings are really big buildings, the footprints are large, the scale becomes a question. These are facilities that are governed by courts and fields of finite dimensions and shapes, and so there's parameters that are well-established. You can't have a football field that is 120 yards long and 30 yards wide.

Craig Peterson:

That's not going to work, you have to work with the parameters that exist, but then find ways to make the building feel like it fits. And it goes a couple different ways too, when you think about large-scale campuses, where the life of the campus oftentimes is composed of districts, and so there's an athletic district. Well, then the question becomes is the new facility contributing to the identity of the district, or is it still able to create, and is it still able to create, a tie back to the overall campus, whereas other times there's there's facilities, you know, that are just right there at the heart of campus, and so then the way in which that building integrates and plays off of the surrounding buildings becomes even more critical. So I mean, it's super fun. These are great. These are great challenges, design challenges that are become questions that need to be asked and addressed in the design process.

Kyle Lunke:

You know one. One thing that comes to mind is just the sheer size of some of these athletes. We created a space for the offense and defensive linemen for u of m football, and even down to how are the seats attached to the floor? Because, to be honest, these are, these are big people. All right, 300 plus pounds, six, six, six, seven. And sometimes there's some some rough housing that goes on right in these rooms and you got to make sure that those seats are are anchored down properly. So those tiers, the floor of those tiers, were made of I use three layers of staggered tongue and groove plywood that is anchored down and that those anchors now have more of a bite to it. So these seats are not going anywhere.

Craig Peterson:

Another key element of athletic facilities, you know, in higher ed, is the integration of the visual branding, whether that's team colors or logos or themes that appear, and I think oftentimes think of that as just visual, you know, add on kind of, but it's messaging and it's an identity, reinforce the idea that that I am a part of a bigger thing. You know, and specifically to game day experience, it's about bringing and raising the level of enthusiasm and inspiration and all kinds of things. But even on a day to day basis, walking into the facility and being reminded or inspired by something, you see, we get involved in that application of design into these facilities as well and it's also an incredibly impactful element of these buildings.

Matthew Gerstner:

This has been a great conversation. It's probably gonna spark a lot of questions for some of our listeners and maybe give them some ideas of what this kind of space can be and what it can do for the campuses that that they're on. Thank you all. Thanks, matt, thank you, man. This has been side of design from bwbr, brought to you without any paid advertisements or commercials. If you found value in what you've heard today, give us us a like, leave us a comment or, better yet, share us with your network. You can also reach out to us if you'd like to share an idea for a show or start a discussion. Email us at sideofdesign at bwbrcom. Yo.