Archbishop Riordan High School has upgraded its athletic facilities in a big way. Construction for the new locker rooms and renovated weight room that began in the beginning of May is now complete. The next phase of this process is installing lockers, painting, and rebuilding the weight room in terms of equipment and platforms.

A girls’ locker room has been installed, along with new bathrooms and showers for both girls and boys. In regards to the weight room, it has been expanded almost double in size, with a new rubberized flooring, and brand new equipment is being added day by day.

Ryan Jones ’09, strength and conditioning coach, said, “There are brand new showers, and all new equipment throughout. The weight room has also been expanded, doubled in size, and with that, there’s a lot more possibilities in terms of what we can do with the weight room.”

With the news announced in January that Archbishop Riordan High School would be going coed starting in the 2020-2021 school year, there were many items and facilities that needed to be added.

Two of these additions were the new locker rooms and the renovated weight room.

The construction phase is complete. However, there are still areas that need to be touched up. Aside from the construction process of the locker rooms and weight room, there is an incredible amount of excitement and anticipation stirring up within the faculty and student-athletes.

Jesus Aguilar ’22 stated, “I’ve been looking forward to using the new equipment in the weight room and I feel like the locker rooms were overdue for a remodeling.”

There will be aspects in the locker rooms and weight room that will take some getting used to for both the coaches and students. This includes new rules for the locker rooms and a new schedule for the weight room.

Jones said, “For the weight room, the schedule definitely has to change. Not only because we can accommodate bigger teams, but we also have girl athletes as well, which is something else to factor in. So, it’s definitely going to be a big change in that regard.”

The future holds many new and exciting challenges that will take a while to get used to. The new locker rooms and weight room is something that all students and faculty are looking forward to. The athletics department raised the bar in a big way and the upgrading of the athletic facilities came full circle after remodeling the basketball court, the field, the locker rooms, and now the weight room.

Bob Greene, athletic director, said, “This is a fantastic upgrade for our students and our school. It will be a nice space for our new students to walk into and a treat for our returning students to enjoy being that they will understand very clearly just how much nicer this is than what they had previously.”