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Blue Devils Set To Move Into Yoh Football Center
July 15, 2002
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - The Duke football program will have a new home soon as completion of the $22 million Yoh Football Center nears.
Coach Carl Franks took the media on a tour of the new 70,000-square-foot center Friday. The Blue Devils plan to call the building home at the beginning of August, or about a month before the team opens the 2002 season at home against East Carolina.
"Our players are very excited and are looking forward to moving into the building,'' Franks said. "Some of them have sneaked in already and looked around.
"It's very significant in that it's showing our future players, our present players and our past players that Duke is making a commitment to its football program. This is probably one of the bigger projects that we've ever done in the history of Duke football."
"This won't win or lose football games for us, but what it does is it makes an impact when a young man sees what kind of commitment the university had made to their development as football players," Franks said. "We needed to show that we were serious about developing our athletes on the football field and in the weight room. Those were the things we were lacking."
Franks was instrumental in helping design many of the football-related items of the building, including the player lockers.
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Coach Franks shows off |
"It has been interesting going through the process of getting this built and making sure that we've got all the things we need - not for just today - but for the future. You don't want a building that will be obsolete in 10 years."
Duke had outgrown the Murray Building, its home for the past 14 years, especially in the areas of the weight room and meeting facilities.
And almost all of the other ACC schools have either built a new football building or had significant upgrades since the Murray Building was constructed in 1988 for $2.4 million.
Just in-state in the ACC, North Carolina and Wake Forest have opened multi-million dollar football buildings in the past few seasons, while N.C. State's is under construction and will be completed by 2003.
"When we were planning on building it we asked: `How many more of these are we planning on building around here?"' Franks said. "When you ask that question the answer is: `This is it, this is the one.' We have plenty of room to expand if we need to do it. It addresses all of our needs now and it should address our needs for the future."
Most of the new football buildings across the country have their share of bells and whistles. Duke's is no exception.
The four-story Yoh Football Center has a speed and agility room, which is a 45-yard long field with state-of-the-art turf that Franks can use for indoor drills in case of bad weather. Part of the turf is made up of sand and ground up rubber.
The center also has three swimming pools for injury rehabilitation work, a 7,371-square-foot locker room and 7,980-square-foot weight room.
The building was constructed adjacent to Cameron Indoor Stadium and not in the open end of Wallace Wade Stadium in part to keep the tradition of Duke running onto the field through a tunnel. Franks said a natural ravine at the location also saved on excavation costs.
"But the main reason we put it here is I didn't want to be a long way away from everybody else," Franks said. "All the other athletic facilities are right here and we would have separated ourselves way too much. It's nice to be around everybody else."
The top gift to the building was $5.5 million by Duke trustee chairman Spike Yoh and Mary Milus Yoh. However, there were more than 750 gifts to the new center, including more than half coming from former Duke football players.
"That's a tremendous percentage for any sport," Franks said. "They have really rallied around this building."
