A new weight room has been on Kansas University’s athletics department wish list for a long time.
“It’s not something I lay awake at night and worried about, (but) I knew when we got it it’d be a tremendous help,” KU basketball coach Roy Williams said Friday at a news conference to announce Dana and Sue Anderson’s $4 million pledge to make a new 25,000-square-foot strength and conditioning center a reality.
“I hoped it’d be sooner than later. I can last long enough to see it now. At one point you wondered if you’d last long enough to see a thing like this happen.”
The 51-year-old Williams, who is in his 14th season at KU, has his basketball players lift weights at least three times a week.
He’s glad the Jayhawks will be lifting in a state-of-the-art facility next year, not one as outdated as the current weight room which Dana Anderson deemed “the worst in the league.”
“I know we’ve been way behind,” Williams said of KU’s current 6,000-square-foot weight facility.
“I haven’t been around to every one (in Big 12). I have talked to people and have seen a couple state of the art weight facilities around the country and what we have now is nowhere near what other people have. This will put us in a ballpark we don’t have to take a back seat to anybody.
“You don’t start to see the results until after the facility is done and the kids have been in there about a year,” Williams added, “but I think at least we can see light at the end of the tunnel now that we have not been able to see in the past.”
Williams said the gift should provide momentum to the start of the Allen Bohl athletics era at KU. Though Anderson and Williams both pointed out the gift was pledged during Bob Frederick’s last year as athletics director, the announcement was timed for Bohl’s first month on the job.
“Dana’s love for the university … he agreed to let us announce it this way just because he wanted to be that trampoline, getting Al Bohl off on the right foot,” Williams said, noting Anderson “has a great relationship with Bob (Frederick).”
“With the spirit and enthusiasm Al is bringing to the job, he thought it’d help set off Al’s run as athletics director. Dana does not look for publicity,” Williams added. “The fact of the matter is this is not the largest gift he’s ever given. The building we are standing in right now (Parrott Athletics Complex) … Dana and Sue gave money to help build. Right behind this place is a practice facility (Horejsi Center) they gave money to help build. There were no press conferences to announce those.”
Williams believes the Anderson donation could be the sign of things to come in KU athletics.
“I think anytime you have positive things happen they bring more positives,” Williams said. “The more you win, the more you win. The more birdies you make the more birdies you make. I think the more powerful things like this that happen, more gifts will come in and hopefully we can get it flowing so we can keep going. Hopefully it’ll be like that snowball that goes downhill and gets bigger and bigger.”
Hoops summit next week: Williams will attend next week’s National Association of Basketball Coaches and Josefson Institute of Ethics Tip-off Major Summit on the Future on Amateur Basketball in Kansas City. KU’s coach is NABC president.
J.I. founder and president Michael Josephson will moderate the three-day session and address issues surrounding:
athletics department budget caps and coaches salaries.
recruiting athletes not otherwise suited for the university.
regulation of summer basketball.
contract disincentives for poor on and off the court sportsmanship.
fundamental issues of athlete health and safety.
Other coaches who will attend include: Jim Boeheim (Syracuse), Tubby Smith (Kentucky), Gene Keady (Purdue), Ernie Kent (Oregon), Dave Odom (South Carolina) and Kelvin Sampson (Oklahoma).
The group will announce its findings Wednesday.
“I think it will be (intense),” Williams said.
“I hope we can send a message about the proper ethics in college athletics and proper ethics in sports and hopefully we can get something done.” .
Exhibition game update: So far, 8,827 tickets have been sold for the Utah Jazz-Philadelphia 76ers exhibition game set for 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18 at Allen Fieldhouse. The game marks the return of former KU coach Larry Brown, now with the Sixers, and ex-KU center Greg Ostertag, who is with the Jazz.
