Draya Rios/THE RIDER
UTRGV Athletics debut $45M facility
From a weight room to a couple of fields, the UTRGV Vaqueros Performance Center offers student-athletes a new, shiny home, a place to train and sharpen their skills.
Senior Vice President and Director of Athletics Chasse Conque said the department has seen “tremendous growth” over the last several years.
“This building that we’re here to celebrate, it’s more than a building,” Conque said. “[Student athletes will] go practice, they’ll rehab and they’ll commit to their academic success. This facility is going to help develop our student athletes, but it really will help transform lives.”
The $45 million facility, which opened Friday, is 45,000 square feet with a 7,542-square-foot weight room, a 143-seat team room, eight positional meeting and coaches’ conference rooms, two practice fields—one turfed (which is also striped for soccer) and one with natural grass—and more.
“The beauty of this facility is that it impacts all of us,” the director of Athletics said. “With the state-of-the-art equipment, with the facilities that we have here, we’re going to be able to open this up to not just football, but all of our programs.”
Conque said it is the 11th opening out of 13 capital projects the department has invested into the university over the last four and a half years.
“The future of Division I athletics in the [Rio Grande] Valley has never been brighter and the state of Division I athletics in the Valley has never been stronger,” he said.
UTRGV President Guy Bailey said he has never been anywhere where there was more excitement than the inaugural game, comparing it to the University of Alabama and Texas Tech University—schools in which he was president.
“The reason we have this [facility] is you,” Bailey said. “This is really a celebration of you. It is not just the university; it is the City of Edinburg.”
Football head coach Travis Bush said hearing Bailey talk is “truly a special time.”
“[I have] never been more proud of any group we’ve ever been a part of,” Bush said. “The young men in this building … they came here on a dream.”
He said it is “so special” to see the Valley rally together.
“Everybody out there in orange; I mean, it’s just, they love it,” Bush said. “If I could express what our young men feel, you would truly get the vibe of [it], and it really would make you proud of everyone, of everything they’ve done here. … It is fun to watch everybody celebrating together.”
He said the players “live” in the facility, seeing them more than they see their families.
“They live in this building more than they go anywhere else in their life,” Bush said. “So, to make that daily life the best possible is so special. We can’t thank everybody enough.”
Draya Rios/THE RIDER
