In-depth look at Hilltopper Fieldhouse opening this fall

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – On Tuesday, the final beam was raised on Western Kentucky University’s campus for the new Hilltopper Fieldhouse, a building set to house practice facilities for the WKU Football team, and other organizations like the Big Red Marching Band.

“This will be a spectacular addition in many ways… if you think about it, people come and go right? I mean, coaches come and go, athletes come and go. Even administrators come and go, but buildings stay… and this will have a generational impact. It will enable us to recruit at a higher level. It will enable us to develop athletes at a higher level, and I think even when coaching positions come open, having this versus not having it is a plus, because many people in the country won’t have something this nice,” WKU Athletic Director Todd Stewart says.

Reeves Young is the design firm behind the Hilltopper Fieldhouse, which also helped design the WKU press box at Houchens-Smith Stadium. Their team learned a lot from that design process, which helped them with this project.

“We did learn a lot from the pandemic, and really a lot of preplanning went into this before we ever ordered any materials… especially for the press box piece, because we were working between football seasons, it was really important that we got all of our shop drawings approved, we’ve got all of our steel secured and then the fabrication line so that we could meet the deadlines,” general manager Jennifer Kinsey says.

With that analysis, the building process has been sped up a lot, with crews learning another thing through this project specifically:

“Weather is becoming less of a factor now that we have a roof… so that’s great. I was just asking the project engineer… I said, ‘When are we ready to start doing exterior metal studs around the outside?’ and he said within a few weeks,” Kinsey says.

President Timothy Caboni says even though this is an athletic investment by the university, it’s also an investment in other groups that bring just as much to campus.

“Our Esports program also competes nationally… you think about forensics and the attention that they bring to our university… and then lastly, the Big Red Marching Band. When they marched in London, there were half a million people along the parade route… but there were over a billion watching on TV. What a great way to deliver the message about the high-quality experience we create for students here on our campus,” Caboni says.

The new building is set to open this fall.