By: Kaylee Simmons

Weight rooms in schools are becoming a much bigger thing now. There are now more students and sports that use the weight room at school.

“I think everyone’s understanding the value of strength training for their own personal fitness,” Charlie O’Dell, the athletic director at Bellbrook High School, said. “I think everyone understands that having a strong foundation or strength for your body is healthy and is vital to good health.”

“We’ve seen that transformation of more people using the weight room in our PE classes for the academics side of it,” O’Dell said. “Especially having two PE classes that are devoted to strength training here at BHS, the female weight lifting class and the strength and agility class with Coach Jenkins. Then there is the athletic part of it where there’s not a single sport out there anymore that strength training doesn’t benefit them.”

“I run cross country, track, and I swim,” sophomore Camilla Bozzuto said. “We use the weight room to improve strength and overall performance.”

When the current weight room was built, only the football and wrestling teams regularly lifted weights. Now most sports lift. Therefore, the current weight room has become too small and overcrowded and needs to be bigger to accommodate the students and sports that use it.

The new weight room is going to be an 80′ x 100′ building. It will be a wood framed building wrapped in brick. It will be in the grassy area to the south of the engineering rooms and current wrestling room. The current weight room is going to be the wrestling room, and the current wrestling room will become storage.

The total cost will be $1.25 million. No taxpayer funds will be used to build or furnish this. It will happen via private donations. Fundraising began fall 2024. The goal is to start construction in the fall of 2025 and open the facility in the fall of 2026.

“It will be available to every single Bellbrook student, especially student athletes and the PE classes will use it too,” O’Dell said. “It will really be a 7th-12th grade building. Our middle school weight lifting programs have expanded gradually over the last several years and part of what’s holding back especially the middle school programs is there’s just not enough room in the current weight room. So this will definitely get more kids in 7th and 8th grade lifting and using that space also.”

“Not all sports currently use the weight room but that is definitely the goal and one of my major goals as the athletic director,” O’Dell said. “The goal is to get every student athlete lifting 12 months a year, but we are not there yet. There are still a couple teams that don’t lift at all, but we’re trying to head in that direction. There’s about 500 kids that play a sport here, so almost half of students at BHS or BMS play a sport.”

“I am really excited for the new weight room and I think it will be beneficial,” Bozzuto said. “It will allow us to be able to work to the best of our abilities with all the new equipment. The nicer equipment and machines will allow room for better overall work ethic.”

“I think this will be very beneficial,” O’Dell said. “It’s the only place where we spend money and it can benefit every single athlete or student at BHS. When we put money into the weight room and into strength condition it has a positive impact for every single student athlete here at BHS. To me, that is huge when it comes to deciding how we are going to spend our money and how we are going to invest in the kids.”

“Right now having every kid lift is just impossible and this will remove another huge barrier with that,” O’Dell said. “The more we talk about it, the more people know about it, the more we will have people donate to it also.”