Tricia Sawtelle and Cara Sharpe stood together near a coat rack in the corner of the Student Recreation Fitness Center at 12:45 in the afternoon. Sawtelle and Sharp, Olathe, seniors, took off their coats and joined a smattering of students using the recreation center. The two girls said they use the center four to five times a week. They come here at this time because they know that within the next few hours weightlifters, runners, basketball players, and martial artists will pack the building.

“The only way we come in the evening is if we have tests,” Sharpe said.

But students may not have to worry about finding a treadmill or dumb bell during the peak hours of the recreation center anymore. The Student Recreation and Fitness Center is in the midst of a 6.3 million dollar expansion.

Mary Chappell, director of recreation services at the University of Kansas, said when construction crews finish the expansion in May 2008, students will have 45,000 square feet of new amenities and equipment.

The expansion, which will include four new multi-purpose courts, two new racquetball courts, a longer indoor track, a new martial arts room and a new golf simulator, is a recreation center development trend at universities across the country. According to Steven Martini, the director of recreation services at Kansas State, more than 300 university recreation centers are under renovation or expansion.

On Nov. 13, 2007 Kansas State joined Kansas as one of those schools. At Kansas State students voted to spend 21 million dollars on an expansion of Peters Recreation Complex.

The Kansas and Kansas State projects both came after a 49.2 million dollar expansion of the recreation center at the University of Missouri. “MizzouRec” opened in 2005. With 293,000 square feet of basketball courts, hot tubs, and flat-screen televisions, Sports Illustrated On Campus named MizzouRec the top university recreation center in the country in a September 2005 issue. Just like the Kansas and Kansas State recreation centers, students paid for MizzouRec with student fees.

But while university students pump more and more money into recreation centers, Chappell said her main goal was to give students what they need.

“We do see what’s going on around us,” Chappell said about the recreation center developments at Missouri and Kansas State. “We know it’s a good retention and recruiting tool.”

Lisa Pinamonti-Kress, director of the Office of Admissions and Scholarships at the University of Kansas, said the Office of Admissions sends prospective students information about the recreation center after the University accepts their application.

“It is something that we talk about, and students like to know what we have,” Pinamonti-Kress said.

Chappell agreed the student recreation and fitness center was positive for luring prospective students.

“They come into the rec center, and I think it paints a really good picture of something that they could utilize once they get here.”

The University of Kansas hasn’t always had a million-dollar recreation center. Until 2003, Robinson Gymnasium was the only recreation option for students. Robinson Gymnasium, which is home to the School of Education’s Health, Sport, and Exercise Science program, was open limited hours. Chappell said in 1998, Kevin Yoder, the student body president at the time, led a small task force of students to determine if students would pay for a new recreation center. That task force decided that students would pay $50 on top of the old $13 recreation fee. Student Senate charged students a $50 dollar recreation fee, and construction on the new recreation center began in 2002, with the grand opening coming in 2003.

Chappell said Recreational Services was fortunate to be able to add on to the center this quickly. She said in 2004 former student body president Andy Knopp negotiated a deal with athletic director Lew Perkins. Knopp traded 1,500 student basketball seats to the Kansas Athletics department for 6.3 million dollars. Construction crews started working on the expansion project in March 2007.

But will a nicer recreation center attract potential students? Martini, who has been at Kansas State since 1980, said he thinks recreation centers play a small part in attracting students.

“It’s not so much KU has this, so K-State has to have this, but enrollment at universities has become more and more competitive over the years,” Martini said.

“You want to get students to come to your University, so you have to provide the best programs, the best instructors, the best facilities.”

Chappell has another reason for the spike in university recreation centers­—students expect nice ones now.

“Students that are coming to us now are saying, ‘We’re used to this.’ This is what we had in our high schools, or at our private gym,’” Chappell said.

Chappell said she doesn’t expect the trend of bigger and better recreation centers to stop. In fact, she said people might see a new trend popping up inside recreation centers.

“You are going to see a lot of schools going to the component of wellness. When you go into a rec center, you’re not only going to be playing basketball and racquetball, but you are going to be learning how to cook right,” Chappell said.

Diane Dahlmann, director of Recreation Services at the University of Missouri, said that reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer the three “R’s. “Recreation is the fourth “R,” Dahlmann said.

The Student Recreation Fitness center will be finished after an expansion to the north and south sections are completed.

—Edited by Nick Mangiaracina