University of North Carolina Athletics
Extra Points: Tar Heels Embrace Revamped Home
August 28, 2009 | Football, Featured Writers, Lee Pace
Aug. 28, 2009
By Lee Pace, Extra Points
Workmen are busy running down the punch lists to the major expansion and renovation project of the Kenan Football Center as the curtain to the 2009 football season is just a week away. The graphics are being attached to the walls of the fifth floor media and recruiting rooms. Glass etchings with the names of Tar Heels in the NFL are being inlaid underneath helmets from each team on display in the Hall of Honor. There is mulch to be laid around the walkway from the Bell Tower to the building entrance.
Deemed the "Taj Mahal" of college football facilities just a dozen short years ago when it first opened, the Kenan Football Center has gotten the proverbial "fresh coat of paint"--not to mention an entire new floor and enhancements to most nooks and crannies of the structure.
"We toured half the schools in the country through this building when it first opened," says architect Glenn Corley, whose firm designed the building originally in 1996-97 and handled the current refurbishment. "It was the gold standard. One thing about Carolina: when they do something, they do it right. The alumni, the people who donate money, they take a lot of pride in what we build for them. It's never a case of, `Let's just get by.' It's always, `How can we make this better?'"
While the finishing touches are being applied to the new fifth floor and the building's exterior, the Tar Heel players are taking advantage of the elements already completed over the summer: A new dressing room with custom-designed lockers, a redesigned players' lounge with individual game consoles for Xbox, Wii and PlayStation 3, and meeting rooms with plenty of leg space and elbow room and the finest technology on the market today.
"The improvements to the building are great," defensive end E.J. Wilson says. "They make you glad you're here and they make you want to win for your supporters. All the money they've petitioned for the stadium and the facilities is being put to good use. It inspires us to take care if it. We appreciate what we have."
Fullback Bobby Rome echoes Wilson's sentiments.
"If our supporters care that much, it means we have to put that much more effort on the field for them," Rome says. "It makes me happy to be here, I'm grateful for the chance I got to play here. Where the program has come in five years is amazing, and there's no doubt in my mind it's going to keep going up."
The recent work to the 12-year-old Kenan Football Center was categorized as Phase I in the overall master plan to expand and refurbish Kenan Memorial Stadium. Construction commenced after the recruiting signing date in February and addressed four major needs of coach Butch Davis's program: Expanded and more functional meeting space on the second floor; additional office space for support staff on the fourth floor; a dedicated entertainment area for recruiting on a new fifth floor that will double as study hall during the school week; and an improved design for the players' locker room on the first floor.
Additional phases targeting the south and east sides will include new premium seats and private suites, a press box and a replacement building for the antiquated original field house originally built in 1927. That vision was put on temporary hold last fall as the world economy capitulated in the wake of the housing and sub-prime lending bubbles. But now that the Great Depression II has hopefully been dodged, University officials are on the cusp of announcing a plan to address the east end zone.
"The completion of Phase I is a great start," Davis says. "It's one of those projects that almost exceeds your expectations. Everyone with a hand in it did an excellent job. It looks good, it functions well. It makes a huge impression on players and their parents and all the other visitors who see it. We feel like it's the ultimate facility."
The players spent part of the summer headquartered in the old field house while their new locker room was being installed. One hundred and twenty new lockers with a cherry wood base were designed by Davis, Corley and a custom mill shop in Whiteville after studying a handful of locker designs and tweaking them a number of times. Each unit is two feet wide by eight feet tall and features specific storage compartments for helmet, shoulder pads and smaller pads such as thigh and knee pads, and there's special ventilation built into the storage components so the equipment will dry from one day to the next. Each locker has an individual seat with a navy blue cushion and two small storage drawers for valuables.
"I never liked the look of how guys would just throw their junk in the top of their lockers," Davis says. "This has an attractive, clean look. We just plagiarized different aspects of this locker and that locker and put it into a design that would work for our program."
Offensive guard Alan Pelc points to the space savings by the elimination of stools and the place-for-everything, everything-in-its-place concept of the lockers.
"We were kind of in awe and in a state of shock when we first walked in here," Pelc says. "The locker room is the same size, but it feels larger and the lockers are configured much better. There's no wasted space."
The old second floor housed a team meeting room, individual position rooms, the video studio and computer operation, two offices for support staffers and the players' lounge. By removing the video suite and the two offices and relocating them higher up in the building, additional floor space was freed to redraw and rebuild the meeting rooms. Functional and ample meeting space is particularly important as NCAA regulations in recent years have limited coaching time on the practice field and as Davis's strict doctrine demanding extensive film study has taken root.
"We were really cramped before," says Pelc. "O-linemen are pretty big guys and we were falling over each other in that little room. Now we can spread out and breathe a little."
"The second floor is the single-most dramatic change in the entire building," Davis says. "The meeting rooms were cramped in some instances and we didn't have room for the offense and defense to meet independently as a group. These changes will dramatically help our team."
The players' lounge is a welcoming enclave for spending time between classes and during evenings with the video games, two pool tables, a foozball table, a half-dozen 55-inch TVs and a bank of computer kiosks.
"And the couches are great for naps during training camp," Pelc says.
The original concept developed one year ago for extending the building up included a fifth and sixth floor, the top level to house private entertainment suites and premium seating. But zoning, insurance and cost issues redirected those plans to include only one additional floor. The fifth floor has 17,000 square feet, much of it a large entertainment and dining area where recruits, their parents, player hosts and the coaching staff will congregate pre-game and on official visit weekends in the winter. When not being used for recruiting purposes, the floor will serve as study hall and academic support and it can host a variety of other functions--from the annual women's clinic to the high school coaches clinic in March.
There is also a media room where Davis and players will meet with the press, and the video production suite and staff offices have been moved to this floor as well. The football program in recent years went to a digital video system with computers throughout the building where coaches and players can access practice, game and opponent tape with the click of a mouse. Student video assistants shoot seven cameras during each practice, the data stored on high-capacity P2 cards, and a bank of six TVs with satellite connections allows the staff to tape a myriad of college games each weekend. The department's storage capacity is 52 terabytes (a thousand gigabytes).
"We shoot seven cameras at practice, and most places shoot only four," says video coordinator Chris Luke, who came to Chapel Hill a year ago from Texas A&M. "I tell people if I'd known Carolina had the want-to and ability to do this kind of stuff, I'd have been here 10 years ago. I came from the Big 12 were football is `king,' and we didn't have the funding and support to go this route."
Two more elements to the enhanced Kenan Stadium most noticeable to fans will be the brick archways on the exterior of the football center on the west end. That style of architectural feature--borrowed from the adjacent Bell Tower--will one day encircle the entire stadium when all the master plan is completed.
And then there are the stadium lights--two banks of 233 fixtures each above the press box on the south side the Pope Box on the north side, combined offering about 50 percent more light than the previous system. The lighting system shorted out during last year's UConn game, forcing a delay of 22 minutes.
"I wish I could be around a little longer," junior cornerback Kendric Burney says. "Coach Davis is definitely making a statement to the players about how important they are and how important it is to play at the University of North Carolina. The facilities are unbelievable, it's like you don't want to go home. The flat-screen TVs, the couches, the games, everything is top-notch. That's what Carolina is all about."
Lee Pace has written "Extra Points" for 20 years and also serves as the sideline reporter for the Tar Heel Sports Network's broadcasts. He and color analyst Rick Steinbacher answer questions from Tar Heel fans during the pre-game show each week. Send your questions to asktheheels@gmail.com.
