Construction of new Thresher Stadium locker room begins
The project's groundbreaking ceremony is set for Oct. 7.
As Bethel College students return to campus and fall sports get back into full swing, the Thresher football team has something very special to look forward to that’s already coming to fruition right before their eyes: the new locker room project — which got underway last week.
Due to circumstances that forced the team to move their locker room to different locations over the past years, the need for an upgrade has been on the minds of the school’s administrators and particularly president Jon Gering for quite some time.
“Their locker room used to be in the basement of Goering Hall,” Gering said. “And what we had noticed over the past several years is — what I would call — incursions or penetrations from groundwater.”
With the football team shifting its locker room out of Goering Hall and into a storage shed right outside of it three years ago, Gering got to work on the idea of a new standalone locker room.
“I had to go to the board of directors and get approval for the project before we actively started fundraising,” Gering said. “So we went to the board and said, ‘Here’s the issue and [here’s why] we need a Thresher Stadium locker room,’ so that’s when it got started. We’ve been fundraising for the last three years.”
Now, with the fundraising complete and the institution rolling out the announcement of the new facility around campus, the timeline for this project is in motion — but always subject to change due to supply shortages worldwide.
And as Fall Fest quickly approaches, Gering and his fellow administrators are set to utilize the groundbreaking ceremony as a chance to show what Bethel has been planning and working hard towards for three years now.
“We’re planning to have the groundbreaking ceremony at Fall Fest,” Gering noted. “That’s the seventh of October. Work has already started though, as we need an access road into the space. That’s why they’re clearing trees in that area.” Gering said.
He continued, “And you can see there are signs hanging up around the football field that say ‘coming in the fall of 2023’ so all senior or final-year players probably won’t get to use it — but everybody else will.”