There’s a better chance that I would watch my roommate paint her toenails than step foot inside Yates Field House. Granted, much of the explanation is undeniable laziness and the fact that 35th and O Street is just too far from that squat building embedded in a hill on the most remote edge of campus.
However, if Yates were a towering, glistening edifice, with a wall of windows overlooking a green quad with a wireless coffee shop within, maybe I would be more motivated to engage in fitness center-related activity. Such a beauty of a gym does exist, in fact, on Georgetown’s sister campus on Capitol Hill. The Law Center opened its first Sport and Fitness Center in Oct. 2004, a 42,000 square foot, four-floor, ultra-modern fortress on the corner of First and F Streets NW.
Members enter the complex via an open tree-lined patio surrounded by benches. Glancing upward, the visitor catches a glimpse of the energy that emanates from the moving feet of joggers on treadmills, who overlook the new Georgetownesque clock tower that stands in the green beyond.
The high ceilings and windows of the entrance area, through which the four-lane pool is visible, create a sense of freshness and cleanliness that invites even the least likely athletic enthusiastic to take a dip or try out the new cardiovascular equipment. The contemporary-style lobby contains leather couches, white marble posts with outlets for laptops, flat lights suspended from the ceiling and gas fireplaces. A deli breathes cosmopolitanism – sandwiches made to order and gourmet snacks like soy chips and hummus.
The facility, awarded the 2005 Craftsmanship Award from the Washington Building Congress, offers exercise studios, aerobic and weightlifting equipment, athletic courts, locker rooms and whirlpools.
Perhaps it’s not a fair comparison to put our humble Yates up against this bastion of fitness – Yates opened in 1979, when, according to current Field House Director James Gilroy, exercising served a different purpose than it does today.
“People came to exercise by playing games; they basically exercised together,” he said. “Now fitness seems to have become more personal. Yates wasn’t built to incorporate all this cardiovascular equipment.”
He added that renovations will continue indefinitely and that it is difficult to maintain the replacement cycle because Yates has a high volume of equipment.
While some students express distaste toward Yates, Gilroy claims that the number of users is increasing, likely due to the addition of the nearby Southwest Quad residence.
Parker Clote (CAS ‘05) supports the facility’s progress, but remains dissatisfied. “It’s absolutely better now with the renovations,” he said. “But it is still far inferior to other schools’ gyms; it’s dirtier, has more older equipment that is potentially hazardous and is undersized for a school this large.”
Gilroy said that Yates has enough money in its maintenance account to fund improvement projects, but a lengthy committee approval process deters progress. A convoluted University bureaucracy leaves us to ogle at the Law Center’s far superior fitness facility.
