‘A symbol of progress’: Missouri Tigers break ground on Stephens Indoor Facility
University of Missouri athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois described Friday’s groundbreaking of the new Stephens Indoor Facility as a “transformational” day for the Tigers.
As Reed-Francois, university president Mun Choi, football coach Eliah Drinkwitz and various donors, including the Stephens family, stuck their shovels into a bed of dirt near the site of the new building, it was not only representative of the start of the project’s construction, but of the athletic department’s attempts to inch closer to the behemoths of the Southeastern Conference.
“This is a symbol of progress,” Reed-Francois said. “We didn’t come to the SEC just to be a part of the SEC, we came to compete and we came to win in the Southeastern Conference.”
Competing for championships was a phrase repeated often in some form or another throughout the morning’s festivities. The hope is that the new $33.4 million indoor football facility, named after donors and MU alumni Brad and Rachel Stephens, will give the Tigers an advantage on the field and in recruiting.
“This is a step towards us realizing our full potential here at Mizzou,” Drinkwitz said. “This building is a step towards our quest to win a championship. It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes step by step performance, and I think that this is going to be huge in our player development.
“This is an opportunity for us to continue to recruit at a high level. But once players get here, they’re going to continue to need to develop and utilizing this indoor is going to be so important for us.”
The Mizzou football team currently either practices outdoors or uses The Devine Pavilion, which opened in 1998, as a shared indoor facility with the baseball, softball and women’s soccer programs. The space only has a 70-yard practice surface, however, which doesn’t well lend itself to practicing for football games played on 100-yard fields.
The new indoor football facility, funded entirely by private donations, features a full-length football field with “appropriate run off distances beyond the end zones and along the sidelines for student-athlete safety,” according to a release from the school when the projects was announced in May.
Construction is expected to take about 18 months to complete, according to Reed-Francois. She said that the athletic department also plans to have a “comprehensive” facilities master-planning process in the spring to reassess needs for other sports.
“We have an opportunity to really repurpose (the Devine Pavilion) and think about, ‘What do we actually need?’” Reed-Francois said. “Let’s analyze it and let’s put together that whole-needs analysis and make sure every student athlete is included.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 1:26 PM.
