Eastern Nazarene College’s (ENC) weight room is just too small to accommodate all of the students who utilize it, making it difficult for students to find times that work with their schedules to work out.
With the weight room’s size being so condensed, there are limited machines and equipment. When the limited amount of equipment is being used, it makes getting a workout done in a timely fashion difficult. This can also cause the workouts to get cut short and progress to not be made. However, athlete or non-athlete, working out is essential for one’s health. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Regular exercise helps prevent or manage a wide range of health problems and concerns, including stroke, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, many types of cancer, arthritis and falls.”
Eastern Nazarene College is committed to students’ personal, relational, career, and physical health development, according to ENC’s Brickley Center. With good physical health being a goal of ENC, better facilities to attain results should be provided.
Many sports teams workout together, which takes up space if anyone else wants to be in the weight room at the same time. Assistant AD for Communications & Scheduling, Rob Rossi, explained that student-athletes make up a high percentage of students who attend ENC, and those are typically the students utilizing the weight room. This leaves very little space for other people to lift. Regarding past and future renovations, Rossi gave information that a couple years ago, equipment that was old and not being used was removed to free up space. Power racks were also added over this past summer. Luckily, Rossi said, there is talk to improve the weight room.
Considering that many students at ENC are athletes, that means a good recruitment tool could be facilities like the weight room. According to the National Intramural and Recreational Sports Association (NIRSA), facilities continue to be a factor in students picking a school. Shelby Holmes, graduate assistant and former basketball player at ENC, explained that prospective athletes are taken on tours and do get to see the weight room. To Holmes’s knowledge, the recruits do not seem to complain about the facilities. However, Holmes does reveal that a few of the basketball players on her current team have complained that the weight room is often crowded.
Junior women’s basketball player, Kyra Fleharty, shares that, in her opinion, the weight room is too small and does not contain enough variety of workout machines: “I prefer to have space when I am working out, and I don’t feel as motivated when I go to the gym [ENC’s] because there isn’t enough room.”
To combat the problem of the small weight room, ENC has a partnership with the YMCA where all students receive free access to the facilities. A problem for many students is the lack of transportation. For this reason, there are shuttle services to the YMCA every thirty minutes from 5-10 PM on Mondays through Fridays. Even though this is helpful, these times may not work with student’s schedules. Students have night classes, team practices, and/or jobs that may make the time slot to the YMCA not doable. Using a weight room on campus is much more accessible, yet students feel discouraged due to the lack of equipment and size.
A small weight room can deter prospective students from attending and current students from not getting their best workouts in. A possible solution to the issue could be an app that lets students know when the gym is full or has a lot of people in it. Another solution would be to invest money into the weight room to expand it and add more equipment. Fixing the issue of the small weight room would make lifting for ENC students a more enjoyable and accessible experience.