GLORIA SHELLER
Staff Writer
I tried to go to the gym yesterday, but when I made the trek from my dorm down to the weight room, excitement turned quickly into disappointment. Rather than seeing ample gym equipment to be used at my leisure, I viewed all seven working cardio machines mounted by sweaty college students and the volleyball team scattered throughout the weight machines.
Sorry, but I’m not about to kick a NCAA champ off the leg press. What was I to do?
How could I have come to such a big, beautiful campus with such a small gym? Hold on. It is not a gym; it’s a weight room.
The Pepperdine Web site boasts a state-of-the-art facility that is “popular for athletic teams, faculty, staff, students, and Malibu residents.”
There lies the problem — the weight room is simply too small to hold such a turnout. The underground dungeon-esque room in no way reflects the rest of the picturesque campus that students pay so much to enjoy.
There should at least be a window so maybe we could get a little of that ocean breeze.
With the free time that I had set aside for pumping iron, I looked into getting answers about the gym facilities. Are there plans to improve our athletic facilities?
I went straight to the source, an employee of the Student Recreation Center. Health and fitness expert and Pepperdine’s weight center manager, Jeeny Miller, agreed the current status of the recreation center is not ideal for students. She informed me, however, that Pepperdine does have plans to improve the Student Recreation Center.
In the the next three years, Pepperdine officials hope to expand the Student Recreation Center by adding a huge weight center, rooms for fitness classes, basketball courts, a climbing wall, an indoor track and a new field that can be used for indoor soccer, according to Miller.
What happens when the whole basketball team decides to come and lift weights all at once? Am I doomed to sit idly by while our D1 teams get a workout?
As nice as that sounds, the answer is no. While I am working a sweat in the new Student Recreation Center, student athletes can be doing the same in their own separate gym, according to Miller.
I wanted to take my news and shout it from the hilltop. I transferred that energy, however, into asking the students how they felt about the plans. Students should be excited about the changes that will one day come — sadly these changes will come after we have all graduated.
“I’d love for the gym to be bigger,” said freshman Chase Darnaud, a member or the baseball team.
Darnaud and his teammate sophomore Barry Enright both agree that there is too much going on in the gym when teams are lifting and students are working out. A new recreation center is a must.
All this news of a new student recreation center is exciting, but plans are still in the making. Such a job will require a lot of fund-raising and most importantly, time. It will take five years of fund-raising before construction can even begin.
In the meantime, you can get out and enjoy the beautiful city in which we live. Malibu has ample beaches and roads that are ideal for long walks and runs. Even the countless stairs on campus can be seen as a way to get the legs you’ve always dreamed about.
10-27-2005