For decades, Frank Beamer has built his "Beamer Ball" brand of special teams play at Virginia Tech with basically one hand tied behind his back. The old indoor facility did not allow the Hokies to punt and kick to Beamer's liking due to a low ceiling, and walls being too close to the sidelines prevented them from any true scrimmage work.
Those issues are soon to be a thing of the past, as contractors are currently putting the finishing touches on the Hokies new $21.3 million indoor facility. The facility, which was built for everything from football to Olympic Sports in mind, will end up being the largest indoor facility among college football programs at 92,000 square feet and a ceiling that reaches 100 feet tall.
This graphic (via @HokieSports) helps to put the sheer size of the new building in perspective.
The doors opened this past weekend while recruits from the 2017 and 2018 class were in town, and all that's left to go up is the graphics to finalize the "Wow" factor with recruits.
“I’m very excited about it,” Beamer told HokieSports last week. “In my opinion, W.M Jordan has built us the best indoor practice facility in the country. It’s an attractive building with the Hokie stone and Virginia Tech all over of it. It answers all the needs in terms of usability, being able to kick and being able to scrimmage and just use it in any way we need."
“It’s just a great addition to our program here. I think it’s the best in the country, and I think it makes a statement about Virginia Tech football that we want to be the best in the country. That’s our goal.”
The indoor facility is something that the Hokies have wanted to do since 1998, but the project was put on hold to make some much needed additions to Lane Stadium and other facilities on campus. Now, Beamer believes that they've got an impressive package to sell recruits on.
“You look at it and I think our stadium is the best in the country from being vertical, and our fans are great. Now we’ve got an indoor facility that I think is the best in the country. We’ve been fortunate that we do have facilities that match up very well with the best in the country.” Beamer added.