Georgia Tech officially unveiled a new locker room for the school’s Swimming and Diving teams. According to school officials, $1.4 million-plus renovation of the space was funded by donors and letterwinners.
Both the men’s and women’s teams will be the beneficiaries of the new spaces, which include several new features including:
- modernized visual displays throughout the space;
- 78 state-of-the-art lockers for student-athletes;
- new coaches’ locker rooms and lounges;
- renovated restrooms and showers;
- new stonhard epoxy flooring.
Interim Toni M. and Richard L. Bergmark Swimming and Diving Head Coach John Ames spoke on the renovations, “This renovation is the perfect way for our student-athletes to arrive on campus with an exciting and energetic outlook for the future of our program.”
“Both locker rooms are state-of-the-art space that could not have been possible without help from so many letterwinners and other donors that helped make this become a reality, and the home of Georgia Tech swimming and diving.”
Despite the upgrades to the facility, Georgia Tech still has not named a new head coach for the Swimming and Diving program. Ames has been serving as the interim Head Coach since longtime coach Courtney Shealy Hart announced her departure from the program earlier this month. Hart, who said she resigned to pursue new professional opportunities, had been the coach of both teams for 15 years prior to her departure. The school has not announced whether or not they intend to hire or promote a head coach prior to the start of the 2024-2025 NCAA season.
Georgia Tech has historically been one of the most common hosts of the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. The school most recently hosted both the men’s and women’s championships back in 2022, with both meets slated to return to the pool in 2026. The McAuley Aquatic Center currently has the capacity to host about 1900 spectators.
Only one thing matters in a swim locker room. The showers. How are the showers?
A team locker room for a Div 1 team is amazing. Wish all schools had one.
Given the state of the world, would you rather a $1.4 million locker room or a $1.4 million head start on an endowment?
GT also has a lot of their scholarships paid by endowments, along with the head coach position. Best Alums and a donors!!!
Great to see the renovation. A word of caution for all universities. Americans with Disabilities laws now since 2014 require that any athletic facilities, including swimming pool spectator access be brought up to ADA standards if any renovationis performed after 2014. I know of at least one major university who failed to comply with this requirement in a renovation and may be required to do additional expensive access renovation.
Nice to see! Can’t wait to see Ohio St renovate too!
Are they planning to? That’s exciting!
With all the money we have to pay GT to run meets, I figured they could have at least spent 2 million. Cheap bastards…
That money goes to the CRC, not GT Athletics. They are separate. CRC had nothing to do with the renovations. Just FYI.
No locker doors?
It’s a space with a passkey protected or ID/fab entry in what is probably already a controlled entry building. plus, given the style of lockers in major sports, this is the trend. Also.. if you’ve never been in a men’s collegiate swimming locker room, closed lockers plus damp towels with no air movement equals terrible smell.
I hope they are going to put some money into renovating the facility. It needs some updating.
I believe they are
Nice chunk of change from donors and alumni. That has to be a pretty nice positive and attractive sign for potential coaches. Shows some solid support
Taking a while to hire a Head Coach. If it was football or basketball, it would have been done already!
Alabama did over 20 million in upgrades recently… we’ve hired multiple coaches where this is their first coaching job, and multiple others where this is their first paid coaching job.
Bugg?