Calvin News

On January 7, 2009, another milestone in Calvin athletics was marked as the men’s and women’s basketball teams returned to campus for their first games in the new Van Noord Arena.

Watch Calvin College men's basketball home opener from Calvin College on Vimeo.

Watch Calvin College women's basketball home opener from Calvin College on Vimeo.

But the new arena will host not just sports. It will be home to a wide array of events, everything from opening Convocation, which begins the Calvin school year each September, to Commencement, which concludes the school year each May. The new arena also will host concerts, lectures, conferences, camps and other activities.

Van Noord Arena includes four full-sized basketball and volleyball courts, two fitness facilities, classrooms and staff offices, locker rooms, an athletic training room more than double the size of the former room, improved concession facilities and juice bar, a hospitality area, a spacious lobby area and even a climbing wall! 

Five-part project more than just sports

“This facility is a wonderful gift to our students and this community,” said Glen Van Andel, a recreation professor emeritus who co-chaired the committee that planned the $50 million Spoelhof Fieldhouse Complex (SFC) project, which includes Van Noord Arena.

“It provides us with outstanding venues for our basketball teams and our volleyball team, but it is so much more than just a sports facility. It will allow us to take our academic and athletic programs to a new level. This facility has been dreamed about for many years.”

Van Noord Arena is just one component of the five-part SFC, and varsity athletics is just one focus of the SFC.

To meet the needs of the entire Calvin community, the completed complex includes the following:

• the 5,000-seat Van Noord Arena
• the Huizenga Tennis and Track Center
• the Venema Aquatic Center, which features a 50-meter by 25-yard pool
• the Hoogenboom Health and Recreation Center, a significant renovation of the old Calvin Fieldhouse
• the Marian Hoogenboom Health Services, the new home for student health services

Sports, classes, labs, student health and more

The Huizenga Tennis and Track Center houses a 200-meter (one-eighth mile) track wrapping around four competition tennis courts. The facility also features two long jump pits and two pole vault boxes or pits. It will be used by Calvin varsity teams—and also by the student body as a whole—for indoor running when the weather is inclement, for recreational activities such as indoor soccer and for physical education classes.

The Venema Aquatic Center features an Olympic-sized pool with a movable bulkhead to accommodate multiple events at the same time. As wide as the former pool was long, the new pool is 14 feet deep at the diving end, four feet deep in the middle for swimming lessons and instruction, and seven feet deep at the starting blocks.

The old Calvin Fieldhouse, meanwhile, will be converted into a multipurpose facility, the Hoogenboom Health and Recreation Center. All of the upper bleachers will be removed from the old facility, creating space for much-needed classrooms including a human performance lab—a critical part of the college's exercise science program. The fieldhouse also will feature a new dance studio and a renovated dance studio, providing space for the expanding Dance Guild activities and the popular HPERDS dance minor.

In addition the on-campus health center at Calvin for students, now housed in the basement of a residence hall, will be significantly expanded and find a new home in the renovated fieldhouse. The Marian Hoogenboom Health Center will expand from an approximately 2,000-square-foot facility currently to an approximately 6,000-square-foot center complete with numerous exam rooms, lab offices, a diet counsel room and various health center employee offices.

The new SFC will enhance the academic experience for students studying exercise science, sports management, therapeutic recreation, dance and more in the health, physical education, recreation, dance and sport (HPERDS) department; it will give the popular intramural program at Calvin room to grow; and it will provide superb fitness and recreational facilities to the Calvin community.

State-of-the-art facilities

“The new buildings will be great for our varsity teams,“ said Calvin women’s athletic director Nancy Meyer. “But in addition to being an athletic director I am a professor, so I know what these buildings will add to our academic programs. For any student taking a HPERDS course, whether that be in recreation, using the rock climbing wall, or in exercise science, using the new human performance lab, these facilities will be a big plus.”

Meyer added that the new SFC facilities also take advantage of the many changes in technology that have been discovered since Calvin Fieldhouse was built:

“These really are state-of-the-art facilities,” she said. “The new pool has been designed to be extremely fast and versatile. You might think that water is water, but the way that pools are designed and built now actually makes them much faster than they were when our original pool was built. Also, the diving well will have an aeration system which makes the landing 'softer' for divers. The new arena and side gyms have a high-tech flooring system which is designed to absorb shock and add to one's vertical jump at the same time. It will lessen the stress on knees and ankles and hips. These kinds of features will be a plus for our varsity athletes, but also for recreational athletes, including students, faculty and staff.”

Holistic approach to education enhanced by SFC

Calvin president Gaylen Byker said the college wants students to experience a full, holistic education, and the Spoelhof Fieldhouse Complex will become a critical part of that training both inside and outside the classroom.

“We want to provide students with knowledge and habits about academic subjects, but also about lifestyle choices and developing habits that will last a lifetime,” Byker said. “We do this in hundreds of ways a semester in the areas of spiritual and mental health. But as a Christian college I believe we also need to make a commitment to physical health. The Spoelhof Fieldhouse Complex will allow us to do that in ways we have not been able to in the past.”

Byker said the support of lead donors has been critical to the success of the project—and gratifying.

“These additions have been part of our campus master plan for many years,” he says, “and they are long overdue. When we have talked to donors about the project, they have recognized the need and worth of what we are planning. They understand the importance of this project and how it fits into our mission as a Christian, liberal arts college. That has been very satisfying.”