For 12 months, The Summit League staff worked in temporary quarters, hosting student athletes, coaches, athletic directors, and presidents from nine institutions in an area that could be described as a storage unit with offices.
That changed in September, when the NCAA Division I athletic conference moved into its new headquarters on the Sanford Sports Complex. It occupies the second floor of a Sanford Health building that houses its new Acute Care/Fast Track Orthopedic Clinic.
For officials with the Summit League, which had been located in Elmhurst, IL, since its founding in 1982 as the Midcontinent Conference, the chance to offer input into the design of their new headquarters far outweighs the temporary inconvenience.
“We wanted conference space, a nice big area to do our meetings,” which can draw up to 40 people, said Myndee Kay Larson, The Summit League’s deputy commissioner. “We wanted a lobby that really celebrated our student athletes and their achievements.”
The TSP Inc.-designed Summit League office offers that and more, including a small studio. Set up with a permanent backdrop, it can be used to film interviews with coaches or Commissioner Tom Douple providing information to Summit League members. Those include the University of Denver, Purdue Fort Wayne, North Dakota State University, the University of Nebraska Omaha, Oral Roberts University, the University of South Dakota, South Dakota State University, and Western Illinois University.
The studio and conference room received their first extensive use earlier this month when The Summit League had its first Media Day to preview the upcoming basketball season. Journalists interviewed coaches for the men’s and women’s teams in the large conference room, following a rotating schedule. Across the hall Midco Sports Network broadcasters back in their home studio conducted interviews individually for later programming.
TSP’s engineers worked with Summit League and MidcoSN officials to set up technology that allows such interviews to take place, said CEO Jared Nesje, who supervised the project.
“We connected with the Midco folks and The Summit League folks to understand what they needed and coordinated connections so Midco can come in, in a simplified version, with a TV cable, plug it into a wall, and they are connected,” Nesje said. “With their input, from our standpoint, it was just another design coordination meeting.”
Such meetings with TSP were key to the design process, Larsen said.
“It was weekly meetings for a while and balancing what the space can handle and what we needed and functionality,” she said. “It was a very collaborative effort: This is what we can do with the space and how it will come together. It really surpassed what we had in our heads.”
TSP also did the interior designer, helping with the selection of carpeting and finishes for the offices.
Nesje described the conference room and studio as the nucleus of The Summit League office.
“The Summit League obviously knew what they wanted and needed, Sanford provided it, and we provided the tools to get it to there,” he said.
Sanford Health is leasing space in its clinic to The Summit League. The entire building was constructed for $4.3 million.
“We’re thankful to Sanford Health and (CEO) Kelby Krabbenhoft for letting us be part of their space,” Douple said. He has led The Summit League since 2006.
The Summit League’s 10-person staff, which includes an intern, uses the space completely. A room that now stores the group’s archives can be converted into an office if necessary, while shelves in a storage room hold plastic tubs, safely out of public view.
The new office space received good reviews during Media Day.
“The building was very impressive, both inside and out,” said Jacob Wuertz, a University of South Dakota student and member of the sports staff for the student radio station, KAOR FM. Media Day was the first press conference he had ever attended.
“We got really good reaction from the coaches and athletic directors and senior women’s administrators,” Larsen said. “It’s a good space for a mid-major conference to have something dedicated to itself like this.”