The Chick Evans Field House celebrated its grand opening Tuesday after a two-year, $2.3 million renovation.

“Let the games begin,” said John Sweeney, director of the Office of Campus Recreation.

More than 50 people celebrated the opening. Speakers included Sweeney, NIU President John Peters, Student Association President Craig Marcus and Eddie Williams, executive vice president and chief of operations for Finance and Facilities.

The fieldhouse was available for student use Aug. 23. During the summer, the fieldhouse was opened to local camps.

Renovations to the fieldhouse include the addition of two rink courts for indoor soccer and hockey and two courts for basketball and volleyball.

One student at the ceremony, David Washington, a freshman industrial technology major, said he plays basketball every day at the Office of Campus Recreation but likes the new features at the fieldhouse.

“I like the rims at the fieldhouse because they are more like standard NBA rims,” Washington said.

The fieldhouse serves as an extension of the Student Recreation Center’s facilities. Other renovations for the fieldhouse include a fitness center with more than $100,000 in cardiovascular and weight-training equipment and two activity rooms for fitness classes and martial-arts clubs.

“I work out every day late in the afternoon, and it gets really busy in the rec,” said sophomore business management major Ashley Novak. “The fieldhouse is very clean and less congested.”

The new and improved fieldhouse was the home of the NIU basketball team before construction of NIU’s $36 million Convocation Center.

“Planning for the fieldhouse started five or six years ago,” Sweeney said. “We shut down two years ago to start the destruction phase of the project before we constructed anything, so half of the student body has never been inside the fieldhouse.”

The fieldhouse has two smart classrooms and is the new home of NIU’s ROTC.

“I think it’s great because I have an office now,” said Dale W. Burbank, assistant professor of Military Science.

Physical training for ROTC and all academic classes will be scheduled before 4 p.m. The fieldhouse will be open to the public after 4 p.m. and close at 10 p.m. to help decongest the afternoon traffic at the Rec, Sweeny said. The fieldhouse does not have weekend hours.

“I don’t work out like I should,” said sophomore journalism major Sunde Hilliard. “But I like the new fieldhouse a lot better than the Rec, so it should help motivate me to work out.”