Though renovations to Cousens Gymnasium are still ongoing, the facility remains on track to host the volleyball team's home opener against Wesleyan on Sept. 18, Assistant Athletics Director for Facilities/Field and Game Management Tim Troville said.
Contractors are putting the finishing touches on the project, with collapsible bleacher seating expected to be installed by tomorrow and new basketball hoops that will be ready by next week. And while use of the new court, which is still in the process of hardening, has been restricted, the volleyball team has been allowed to practice on it since Sept. 2.
One week from tomorrow, coach Cora Thompson's squad will be the first to showcase the refurbished facility, which now has a regulation-sized basketball court, a new sound system, improved handicap accessibility, environmentally-friendly lighting and a restored lobby.
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"When you see things on blueprints and architectural designs it's always difficult to translate that into what the finished project is going to look like, but it has far exceeded my expectations," Troville said.
The renovations began on March 23 despite an economic slump that has halted other phases of the work on Tufts' athletics facilities. They were scheduled to be completed by a soft Aug. 15 end date, but construction persisted into the fall semester, thanks in large part to delays involving the centerpiece of the project, a 90-degree rotation of the basketball court.
In the initial plans, the readjusted court combined the original floor with the existing boards reoriented so that they ran parallel to College Ave. and newly added pieces that would lengthen the court to an NCAA regulation size 94 feet. Eventually, however, officials in the Athletics Department opted to purchase an entirely brand new floor that then had to be painted and coated, extending the timeline for the renovations into September.
"If we stayed with the old floor, you could be dribbling the basketball or playing volleyball or any other sport in there, and you'd be able to feel under your feet the transition from the existing floor to the new floor added in," Troville said. "That's something that we really did not want to happen."
"The new floor is one consistent floor, the color is all the same, all the paint matches up to our Tufts colors, and, in general, it will be more consistent for play and practice," he continued. "If we decided not to go with the new floor, we would have been on time, but I think the Tufts community would have been really disappointed."
Other enhancements to the Cousens complex, aimed at improving its aesthetic and entertainment value, are largely complete. Chief amongst these are new speakers located above the scoreboard, part of an overhaul of the facility's unintelligible sound system, and an upgrade to the lighting that will save energy through different emissions settings for practices and games.
While modernizing the 77-year-old gym was a primary goal of the renovations, another concern was maintaining the old-school charm that has distinguished Cousens from other collegiate sporting venues. As a result, three rows of original wooden seating were preserved on either side of the court and the stairs leading to some of the locker rooms and the arches above the court were also left intact.
"Our goal was to preserve the uniqueness of the facility because Cousens is truly distinctive and historic," Athletic Director Bill Gehling said. "There's no place like it that I'm aware of, certainly in our conference. We didn't want to lose the specialness of the facility, but at the same time we wanted to bring it up to modern standards. And I feel like we've accomplished that. You still feel like you're in a unique old gym, but it's really modernized in just about every way."
After the volleyball team's season ends later this fall, the men's and women's basketball squads hope to christen their refurbished home by hosting NCAA Tournament games for the first time in school history. Though Tufts' basketball programs have qualified for March Madness five times since 1995, they have never had the benefit of home-court advantage because the Cousens floor, built to high school standards in the 1930s, was not regulation sized.
"The past couple years, since our program's been doing well, the Athletics Department has done a couple things to show their support — this obviously is huge," women's basketball tri-captain senior Katie Wholey said. "It's really exciting for us because it's always great to have home-court advantage and have your fans there. It puts a little pressure on us to make the NCAAs again."
"I think that this will be viewed as a top facility for hosting games now," Gehling added. "Our location is great, the facility is distinctive. I fully expect that we'll be hosting NCAA games — hopefully this year."
