Mason Brown
Staff Writer
The Cary Street Gym has been hard at work providing classes, ellipticals, recreational and intramural sports and, of course, zumba. Like the exercise it provides to students, the work produces results.
Most recently, the gym received an award for “Outstanding Sports Facilities.”
VCU’s Cary Street Gym has been listed as one of nine outstanding sports facilities in the nation by the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association. In the past, other schools that have won the distinction with their facilities include Drexel and Virginia Tech.
The award is given out at the NIRSA Annual Conference and Recreational Exposition, this year in Tampa, Fla. The award “is presented to facilities NIRSA considers to be functional and architectural standards or models by which other collegiate recreational facilities should be measured and from which others can benefit.”
“NIRSA is what recreational sports strive to be the best in,” said Tom Diehl, director of VCU Recreational Sports. “We received this award because of both our excellent design and programming.”
According to Diehl, the complex has a significant amount of students involved in recreational sports programs. Since the renovation, student membership in recreational sports has jumped from 40 percent to 75 percent.
The Cary Street Gym is the center for VCU’s multifaceted recreational sports program, which include club sports, intramurals, exercise classes and several other services provided to students through the program.
“One of the best things about Cary Street Gym is that it is a dedicated recreation facility,” Diehl said. “The students can come every day, and they know it will always be there because it is for them.”
The award rates facilities that have been constructed or renovated within the past two years and dedicate a large portion of its square-footage to recreational sports.
The criteria on which it is judged include unique aesthetic of architectural features, relationship between facility design and staffing, innovative construction methods and sustainable features.
The Cary Street Gym opened at 101 S. Linden St. for the spring 2010 semester. The former city auditorium building underwent a $47 million renovation and was constructed to meet LEED Silver standard, a measure for sustainability in buildings. Several parts of the original auditorium can still be seen in places like the entrance and outside walls. C