DeKALB | It took place in a modest size tent on Friday night, but the announcement was anything but that.

Both NIU president John Peters and NIU athletic director Jim Phillips declared on Friday night that Jeffrey and Kimberly Yordon would donate 2.5 million dollars towards the Academic and Athletic Performance Center.

“We’re here to announce a historic moment in NIU athletics. It is a monumental moment in our evolution,” Phillips said. “It is the single largest gift ever in our 108 year history of intercollegiate athletics.”

Phillips believes there are four critical terms that come to his mind when he thinks of the Yordon’s and their gift to the university. Those terms are vision, passion, leadership and selflessness/inspiration.

The building, which up to this point has simply been know as the Academic and Athletic Performance Center, will now be named the Jeffrey and Kimberly Yordon Academic Performance Center.

“It’s a great night for NIU,” Peters said. “Tonight we formally announce that we have achieved two of our major goals. One is we have achieved our nine million dollar fundraising goal for the AAPC.”

Yordon hopes that his donation will help to improve NIU athletics and bring the football program to a new level of success.

“We have an opportunity here to get to the next level. I think we’re almost there,” Yordon said. “I think tonight you’re going to see a quarterback playing for Central Michigan that’s an Illinois kid who the school wanted very badly, and who saw our facilities and said this isn’t the place I want to be. These are the kinds of the kids that we will be able to recruit with a facility this big.”

The Jeffrey and Kimberly Yordon APPC will officially be open on August 1, 2007 in time for the 2007 football season.