Freeman Fieldhouse hosts grand opening

Korby Fenske

Reporter

Crowder College hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony for their newly constructed Freeman Fieldhouse on Oct. 8. The fieldhouse will be used for practices and training for Crowder’s baseball, softball and soccer teams in the winter months.

“This is the first time we have built a sports complex building in the past 20 years,” said John Sisemore, the athletic director and head softball coach for the Lady Roughriders here at Crowder. “All the money that paid for this field house was all donations from outside sources so that means we didn’t have to use school funding that would take away from other students here on campus.”IMG_0014

The building cost around $1.6 million. There were several donors for this building and an anonymous donor that gifted $100,000. Freeman Health System made a sizable donation, and La-Z-Boy donated $150,000 as well.

The fieldhouse is a 15,600 square foot building that will feature an array of sports equipment that Crowder has never had. One of the most significant additions is the soccer team’s new indoor locker room. The building will feature locker rooms for the baseball and softball teams.

The fieldhouse will also have a sports trainer’s room for the personal trainer on campus.

“We are the only college in our region that didn’t have a locker room for all of our sports teams, so this building is a very big deal for our school,” Sisemore added.

The soccer team has never had their own locker room until the Freeman Fieldhouse was finished. “That was actually one of the main reasons why we wanted to build this,” Sisemore said. “The soccer team needed a place permanently and now they finally have that.”

_DSC0117“Now that the fieldhouse is completed and functional Crowder has caught up with other local two-year schools such as Northeastern Oklahoma A&M. Having a brand new training facility will help Crowder’s recruitment process for years to come,” Sisemore told the Joplin Globe.