Wednesday, Associate Vice-President and Director of Athletics Sean T. Frazier announced NIU will create the Northwestern Medicine Performance Center. The project to build the performance center will turn the existing weight room in the Yordon Center into a full-service sports performance area, including a nutrition center.

Frazier said gaining or increasing NIU’s competitive edge pertaining to the retention and recruitment of student athletes was a significant reason for the creation of the performance center. He said the Huskies want to recruit top student athletes and have to up their game to “keep up with Joneses” and fulfill their goals.

“It’s about recruitment of top-level Football Bowl Subdivision athletes,” Frazier said. “You separate yourself when you have a situation where you can bring in a student-athlete who is exceptional of what he or she does in that particular sport into a situation when you can have them condition at a high level, eat, develop physically and mentally and be able to do that and sustain that.”

Frazier said the performance center is going to change the dynamic of the young athletes who enter the NIU program. Brad Ohrt, director of Sports Performance, said he thinks this project is necessary for the recovery aspect of a student athlete’s workload.

“We went back after the 2016 season with football, took a look at our injuries, weight loss issues and performance, and it was a hard evaluation where we were in 2011-13 when we were doing a better job of feeding and taking care of our kids from a football standpoint,” Ohrt said. “That had fallen off during 2014-15, and I think it reared its ugly head and cost us in 2016. We turned around and we changed in the offseason of 2016, made some moves in 2017 and here we are in 2018. You have to learn from some of the things you’ve been through.”

Frazier said the facility would not come to fruition without the generosity of Northwestern Medicine and the donors. He said the project was 100 percent privately funded and donations the athletic department has received are worth more than half a million dollars.

“We are excited to partner with NIU and provide their student-athletes with access to world-class care,” Jay Anderson said, president of Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital, according to a NIU media services news release. “We are looking forward to building a premiere comprehensive athletic health and wellness program with the enhancement of the performance center and opening of the Nutrition Center.”

The construction of the nutrition center will cost nearly $250,000 and an additional $250,000 to $300,000 will go toward making sure the nutrition center is stocked, and facilities are sustained and staffed.

“We have the funds we feel are necessary for the next several years to get it to the operation level we need it to be,” Associate Athletic Director John Cheney said. “By then, as we develop the budgets going forward, we’ll be able to incorporate those costs into the budget.”

Frazier said the performance center is a turning point for NIU and coaches have expressed a similar sentiment.

“I think it helps us move to another level as a department and institution,” Volleyball Head Coach Ray Gooden said. “Having a nutrition center is a game changer. We are very excited to have it because we’ve been doing elements of it, but we want to do something where it shows consistency and our commitment to our student athletes.”

Frazier said the Board of Trustees approval for the performance center’s construction is expected to be made in December. Ohrt said construction is predicted to begin in January 2019 and the performance center is expected to open during the Spring 2019 semester.