Stallings-Evans Sports Medicine Center opens
Chancellor Holden Thorp and Board of Trustees Chair Bob
Winston,
along with Billie and Don Stallings, cut the ribbon
during the May 6 dedication ceremony.
Photo by Dan Sears
UNC’s new Stallings-Evans Sports Medicine Center has
officially opened its doors to students.
The $8.3 million renovation and construction of the space
formerly known as Women’s Gym between Woollen and Fetzer Gyms
was funded with a combination of private gifts and
contributions from the Division of Student Affairs,
Department of Athletics, and College of Arts and Sciences.
The facility provides athletic training and sports medicine
services for the 800 student-athletes who participate in
nearly all 28 varsity sports, plus hundreds more
student-athletes who are involved in club sports and
intramural activities through campus recreation
programs.
The building is named for Don and Billie Stallings of Rocky
Mount, N.C., who made the lead gift in support of the
facility. Stallings, chairman and chief executive officer of
Eagle Transport Inc., attended Carolina from 1956 to 1960,
was a three-year letterman in football and played
professionally with the Washington Redskins in the early
1960s. He served on the University’s Board of Trustees from
2001 to 2009. The building also honors Eddie Evans, the late
son of Billie Stallings, who said she hoped that Eddie’s
“positive caring attitude will always be an example to the
student-athletes and athletic trainers who will work in this
facility.”
At the dedication, Chancellor Holden Thorp said: “This
project represents what Carolina is about — bringing people
like Don and Billie Stallings together with several campus
partners to build this beautiful facility that will help our
student-athletes excel in the classroom and on the playing
field. We are grateful for their generous support.”
Among other named spaces in the Stallings-Evans Sports
Medicine Center are the Bill Arnold Atrium, with gifts from
the Arnold family; the Dr. Hugh Shearin Jr. Plaza, with gifts
from Hugh and June Shearin, also of Rocky Mount; the F.
Marion Barnes Physician Exam Room, with gifts from Marion
Barnes of Rocky Mount and Brent Milgren of Charlotte; and the
Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research
Center, with gifts from the Gfeller family of Winston-Salem,
N.C.
Robert Gfeller, Lisa Gfeller and Robbie Gfeller stand beside a plaque honoring Matthew Gfeller in the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center.
Photo: Dan Sears
The University’s sports medicine facilities were previously in the campus’s Fetzer Gym in a 2,500 square-foot space. The new center was built next door to Fetzer with the conversion of the 70-year-old “Women’s Gym” into a 4,800 square-foot athletic training room and the addition of a 3,000 square-foot hydrotherapy room and lobby, both on the first floor. The top two floors house faculty and staff offices, a large conference room/classroom and the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center, where University researchers conduct cutting-edge science on sports-related concussion and traumatic brain injury. The center is staffed with 11 full-time and three part-time athletic trainers, 18 graduate athletic trainers, two sports nutritionists and four UNC Sports Medicine physicians.
The new center also features a brick plaza inscribed with the names of more than 250 donors that opens into the Bill Arnold Atrium, named for the UNC football player who collapsed and died of heat stroke in 1971 following practice. Arnold’s death and the committee studies that followed led the University to create a sports medicine program that today is a national model.
Kevin Guskiewicz, Kenan Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Exercise and Sport Science, said: “At Carolina, we pride ourselves on excellence in academics and excellence in athletics. This new building illustrates very nicely just how we accomplish this.”