Team chemistry, personal storage, and crazy celebrations. These are all things that come with having a sports locker room.

With all the successful teams and numerous student athletes that play sports at Loyola Academy, a place where teams can meet before or after a game, or even to store all of their equipment seems essential.

Both boys and girls teams at Loyola are always competitive in their conferences and have a reputation to be one of the top-notch schools for athletics in all of Illinois. The Loyola athletic commitment comes with a lot of time, bags full of equipment, and a whole lot of hard work. That being said, shouldn’t students have a place where they can change, shower, and store their gear?

In Loyola’s case, it doesn’t seem like it’s a priority. Seven different sports play at Loyola Academy’s Munz Campus or better known as “the hill” without a locker room.

Locker rooms are much more than what meets the eye. They are a place where athletes can regroup at halftime, give advice to teammates, and unwind without any coaches or media in their face.

High school students deal with a lot of social pressures and have many external factors burdening them. An athlete’s home away from home gives students the chance for their teammates to become lifelong friends. It’s a place where student-athletes can get school work done so they aren’t always climbing a mountain to get homework done late at night.

A possible plan for Loyola could look as the following: on one side of the building would be two small locker rooms for boys soccer and lacrosse, and the other for girls soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey.

On the other end of the building would be a third Jack-and-Jill like locker room for baseball and softball.

Lastly, in the middle of the building would be a relaxed place where student athletes can do schoolwork and socialize.

At the hill there is a very large open area next to the varsity baseball field where a multi-sport locker room would be perfect.

Would it be expensive? Sure, but if Loyola parents, particularly the athletes, raised money over the course of a few short years, combined with the money Loyola currently has to spend, a multi-sport locker room at the hill would be up in no time.