Building off of a successful 2020 season, Indiana University’s head football coach wants to help Franklin College students build muscle.
Tom Allen, the state’s highest paid public employee, is donating some of his nearly $5 million salary to the college to build a weight room as part of the Johnson Memorial Health Athletics Annex, a new athletic complex college officials hope to break ground on this fall, according to a Franklin College news release.
The Allen family chose not to make the donation amount public, spokesperson Deidra Baumgardner said.
Allen’s father, Tom Allen Sr., was a Franklin College alumnus who, as a member of the college’s football team in 1958, persuaded football coach Stewart “Red” Faught to include weight training equipment in The Barn, now known as the Fitness Center. The equipment included a bale of hay and concrete blocks, according to the news release.
This time around, students won’t be moving hay. The donation will ensure the doubling of available weight training space, which will allow more flexibility in scheduling team workouts, and make more time for students who aren’t involved in college athletics to work out, the news release said.
The Tom Allen Weight Room will include many of the same features as the weight room at the Spurlock Center, but the purpose of building it is to create more flexibility and free up time for the college’s 21 men’s and women’s sports teams, said Kerry Prather, the college’s president.
“(The Spurlock Center) is a wonderful space. There’s just not enough of it,” Prather said. “As we looked at our future athletic wants and needs, we thought the ideal (situation) would be to add a weight room onto the Johnson Memorial Annex.”
