Who is allowed in the varsity weight room?

By: Trevia Gumbs
Email: gumbst1@findlay.edu

In having a weight room with a schedule that caters to varsity athletics, the question remains if University of Findlay students and student-athletes alike should have separate work out facilities.
Oiler Athletics is home to 24 collegiate sports including both men and women’s track, basketball, swimming, and soccer just to name a few. Many of these sports teams are in the gym day in and day out.
Student athletes have unlimited access to the gym because of workouts given to them by their coaches. For other students, however, this becomes a challenge because they aren’t “allowed” to be in the weight room during the times that these teams are working out.
Theresa Russell, an avid gym user at UF, says finding time and space to use the gym can be quite a task.
“I work out at home now due to the inconvenience of not being able to work out until 11:00 p.m. when the gym closes,” said Russell.
The varsity weight room is located in the Koehler Fitness and Recreation Complex. It is also home to the Student Recreation Center and the cardio center, which a lot of students use as well. Many students express that they have not had issues with the cardio center as much as they have had with the weight room.
“For the last two years, I attended the gym on average three times a week,” said Russell. “I have learned within the last month that we aren’t supposed to use the weight rooms until after 6:00 p.m. for the athletes’ convenience.”
This poses an issue when many students have hectic class schedules where they cannot use the weight room at any other time. In addition, athletes express their frustration in having to wait to use equipment in the gym. Many of them have classes scheduled around their practices just so they have sufficient time to complete the entire workout provided by their coaches.
Alex DeVincentis, a thrower on the UF women’s track and field team, says it is frustrating to wait for students to finish using the equipment.
“We, [the track team], use the weight room usually from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. almost five days a week. The gym can become very crowded especially around that time. Sometimes it gets so crowded that we have to wait for like 10-15 minutes to find a rack,” said DeVincentis.
Many of the track and field athletes express that non-athletes are not as good at returning the weights where they belong. This creates another issue that athletes find themselves having to do extra labor in terms of moving weights that they do not need to use out of the way just to get the lift they need accomplished.
Both DeVincentis and Russell agree a separate weight room for non-student athletes would be beneficial.
“I think non-athletes should only get a separate weight room. I haven’t had any issues sharing the cardio center with athletes,” said Russell. “This is because the majority of the sports teams do not use the cardio center on a regular basis.”