Southern Illinois University released this rendering of what a new covered football practice facility would look like as part of its 10-year, $100 million Imagine: Salukis Unleashed fundraising drive. (Image via SIUSalukis.com)
By Barry Bottino
Tim Leonard’s tenure as Southern Illinois University athletic director began Aug. 1 in Carbondale. One of his first phone calls was to an architecture firm he had worked with on facility upgrades during his time at four other universities.
This week, Leonard’s summer discussions came into public view when SIU introduced its Imagine: Salukis Unleashed campaign, a 10-year, $100 million fundraising effort to upgrade Southern’s athletics facilities, including construction of a new covered football practice facility, additional football locker room space and revamping a current building into a sports performance center.
“I got here in August, and the architect consultant came out in October. We’ve been working on this ever since,” Leonard told Prairie State Pigskin. “We can’t sit around and wait. We’re going to run. We know we’re running forward and we’re going to run forward as fast as we can.”
For SIU’s football program, the addition of a new practice facility would help alleviate current space constraints.
“The one big thing is they need more practice space,” Leonard said. “We just have the one field in the stadium, so we need another practice field. We looked at this model that a lot of schools are going with, which is a covered practice field. It’s not necessarily an indoor practice field.”
One of the first schools to build a covered practice field was the University of Alabama-Birmingham, which unveiled its “pavilion” in 2017. It was constructed, according to CBSSports.com, at a cost of $4.7 million.
Nicholls State, which was SIU’s first-round playoff opponent last month in Carbondale, recently completed its own covered practice facility, a $5.3 million, 81,000-square-foot building.
“It’s a newer concept,” Leonard said. “It would certainly do a lot for our program.”
During the summer months, a covered facility would keep the turf field out of the sun and allow the offense and defense to practice on different fields, as needed. Inclement weather also wouldn’t be an issue.
“You can get in there and you don’t have to worry about snow and rain,” he said. “It allows us to do a lot more things. … It would not be just for football.”
Such a facility could be used for high school teams in need of a practice facility, along with providing an opportunity to expand Saluki camps for various sports.
“There’s a lot of positives to it,” Leonard said.
The fundraising campaign also would support new football locker room space for SIU and visiting teams.
Football and other programs would benefit from a redesign of Lingle Hall, which is the current home of athletic administration and some coaches’ offices.
“I’d like to knock some walls down … and create a true sports performance model,” Leonard said. “It would give us a competitive advantage. What you really want is for your team doctors to have an office right here. You’d have your athletic trainers, your strength and conditioning folks working together, doing screenings when (athletes) first get here.”
The model also would allow faculty from SIU’s College of Health and Human Sciences – which includes nutrition and dietetics, exercise science and nursing programs – to perform research into athletic performance.
A renewed focus on sports performance, according to Leonard, would include more “wraparound services,” such as nutrition and mental health, which would involve additional staff and resources dedicated to those efforts.
Other planned upgrades as part of the campaign include:
A basketball practice facility
An enhanced baseball clubhouse and training facility with indoor hitting space
A new stadium for SIU women’s soccer
A golf practice facility
Leonard said the timeline for completion of the projects will be “donor-driven,” but if he were setting priorities, the basketball practice facility would come first, followed by Lingle Hall upgrades and enhanced baseball facilities.
Leonard hopes SIU recruits will view the facilities plan as a positive.
“I want them to see this as, ‘Hey, this is a place that’s committed. They want to win. And it’s a place you can come and develop as a student-athlete.’ We’re going to put the resources behind it.”
Barry Bottino is a co-founder of Prairie State Pigskin and a 19-year veteran of three Illinois newspapers. He has covered college athletics since 1995.
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