Spider locker rooms are without ceilings

All of the varsity locker rooms in the Robins Center, with the exception of the football and basketball locker rooms, are without ceilings while the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system is remodeled, said David Walsh, deputy athletic director.

The teams whose locker rooms are affected include baseball, field hockey, women’s soccer, men’s cross-country, women’s cross-country, track and field and women’s lacrosse, Walsh said.

The purpose of the remodeling is to increase air circulation in the locker rooms. Increasing circulation will make the air conditioning and heating system more efficient and will help ventilate the locker room to improve odor. The ceilings are without tiles, so the wiring and ventilation systems that would usually be hidden can be seen, senior baseball player Ryan Cook said.

The absence of the ceiling has not bothered the baseball players though, Cook said. “Everything is up,” he said, referring to the lockers and televisions in the locker room. “There’s just no ceiling tiles. It’s never been brought up. No one’s ever complained about it.”

Despite the remodeling of the HVAC system, the baseball locker room has not had issues with air conditioning, Cook said.

Field hockey player Taylor Deitrick echoed Cook’s sentiment. “It doesn’t bother anyone at all,” she said. “If anything, it made it easier to hang streamers on senior day.”

The absence of a ceiling has not affected the women’s soccer team either, and the remodeling is “well worth it” and “part of the process,” soccer coach Peter Albright said.

Although the remodeling has not been a hindrance, the project is taking longer than expected, Albright and Cook both said. Albright did not give a timetable for when the remodeling was supposed to be done, but Cook said the baseball locker room was supposed to be done before the academic year began in August. In fact, other unknown issues arose with the renovation and the team was without a locker room from August until late September.

Walsh said the project was not taking longer than expected, though. “The whole HVAC aspect that we’re doing is really from now through the summer,” he said. “And so I can’t even tell you in particular when the locker room ceiling will be done and closed up. I don’t even really know the answer to that, because it’s really a non-issue.”

“There are many aspects to the whole Robins Center renovation, and there are certain aspects that it makes sense to do first,” Walsh said. Rather than set strict timelines for all of the smaller projects, the entire renovation is divided into larger phases, so when one phase is finished then the next phase begins, he said.

Some locker rooms currently have better air circulation than others, depending on where they are located inside the Robins Center. When the HVAC remodeling is done, all of the affected locker rooms will have much better circulation regardless of their place in the building, Walsh said.

Walsh does not have an exact timetable for when the ceilings will be replaced, but he said that the HVAC work would be done by the summer and the ceilings would be replaced between now and then.

Contact Sports Editor Charlie Broaddus at charlie.broaddus@richmond.edu