After a full year of closed doors, students and staff are eager to return to the Campus Recreation Center, which opened its indoor facilities back up on April 5. With a goal of promoting exercising and living a healthy lifestyle, Campus Rec will be fully functioning indoors Mon.-Fri. from 8 a.m.- 4p.m. for the remainder of the Spring semester. 

Director of Campus Recreation Shelbi Long stated, “Opening the Recreation Center has allowed our students that ability to get back to a sense of what we had pre-COVID. Our students have been waiting for us to re-open and we are very glad we can give them this opportunity.” She added, “Campus Recreation has missed them!”

In order to keep all staff and students safe, Campus Rec has implemented a limited capacity of up to 16 students, on a first-come, first-enter basis. All students are required to wear a mask, follow signage and markers, and complete a waiver upon first entry. 

The health and safety of students is of the  utmost importance to Campus Rec staff. Rec employee, Sam Walter stated, “The Rec team will be monitoring who is in the Rec Center to make sure we are at the correct capacity at all times. We will be sanitizing all equipment and encouraging students to sanitize their areas, as well.”

The indoor opening of the Rec is the first, big step that the University has taken to bring students back on campus. Unlike the Outdoor Workout Space that launched in March, all of the Rec’s workout equipment will be available for students to use indoors. 

“[The Outdoor Workout Space] was a great opportunity for our students as in interim and it’s always fun to workout outside, but opening indoors was always our goal,” Long stated. 

The Fitness Center and Cardio Alley are fully open with treadmills, ellipticals, free weights, and squat racks. Campus Rec sought to open its resources to students and staff during this time, in order to provide normalcy and a sense of hope for the future opening of campus resources. 

Executive Director of Student Affairs, Erik Dickson stated, “I think it’s great that the Rec Center staff has worked so hard to get us to a point where we can start to have student resources like the Recreation Center starting to open up again.”

The university is preparing for a full return to campus during the Fall 2021 semester, and officials are still working out all of the details of what this may look like. Campus Rec is hoping that their slow progression towards fully reopening will contribute to a successful transition back into the bustling student presence that everyone misses so dearly. 

When asked the reasoning behind the push to reopen so soon, Long stated, “We have been preparing for this moment, so for us it didn’t seem like a big push, just our next step to get our students back working out. We knew at some point we would be able to re-open and we have a detailed plan in place that we have been working on for some time now.”

All departments on Sonoma State’s campus are working hard to ensure that their services are safe and useful for students. The opening of the Campus Rec indoors has given students the tools that they need to stay active during the pandemic, as well as an opportunity to participate in activities that make life feel “normal” again.

“I think it’s important not only to give students the opportunity to have their Sonoma State Rec Center back, but to give students a reason to get back on campus as well,” Walter stated. “It’s very exciting that after a long, stressful year we can look forward to slowly opening more things on campus to bring back some sort of normalcy to Sonoma State!”