Chatham University announced in a campus-wide email on Feb. 7 the opening of Athletic Alley at Chatham Eastside starting in the fall 2025 semester, along with the addition of men’s and women’s wrestling and competitive cheerleading the following year.
Athletic Alley will be a gym where Chatham athletic teams will work out, alleviating the current crowding at the Athletic and Fitness Center (AFC).
Previous years saw several teams travel to Union Fitness in the North Shore to work out in its private athlete lab, but due to financial constraints, trainers from Union Fitness now travel to the AFC. This new location for training has presented some difficulties for teams.
“I think a challenging aspect is just it’s not your dedicated space,” Strength and Conditioning Coach Charles “CJ” Jasper said. “Other athletic teams or individuals or even just students are in there training, and you don’t want to take that time away from them because that’s their time that they want to get better as well.”
The AFC gym has six squat racks, a set of dumbbells and several machines, which have to be shared by 30-person teams and the rest of the Chatham community. The overcrowding of the gym leads to teams working out in the hallway or the dance studio next door if available.
These additions at Chatham Eastside will continue the growth of Chatham Athletics. According to Athletic Director Leonard Trevino, the number of student-athletes at Chatham has gone from fewer than 100 when the school first became all-gender in 2015 to now approximately 475.
The added athletes have made working out in the AFC a challenge for students, as well. Evelyn Fay ‘25 prioritizes going to the gym on weekends when teams have games in hopes there will be more space to work out.
“Working out when a team is there is really challenging,” Fay said. “When a team is there, especially one of the bigger ones … they are taking up a lot of the resources at the gym.”
Athletes are excited for this new opportunity in the fall and believe it will help everyone in the Chatham community.
“It’ll be for there to be a space for teams to go and workout together and not take up much space in the public gym,” Sam Brophy ‘26, a goalie on the women’s hockey team said. “The women’s hockey team often works out after practice in the morning and it can be hard to get the space we need without interrupting other students workouts.”
Athletic Alley also will also add a practice room for wrestling teams in Fall 2026 to Chatham Eastside. The University does not know what the exact cost of construction will be but Trevino said the price would be less than expanding the current gym at the AFC.
“A weight room and a wrestling room, they’re actually not complex features,” Trevino said. “I mean a weight room is really four walls, the weights just need to go in there.”
Jasper believes that having this space will improve Chatham Athletics way beyond the field, court, ice, track and pool.
“It’s definitely more than a weight room,” Jasper said. “ Like, sure, at the bare bones, that’s where people go. They have their strength and conditioning session. But almost everywhere I’ve been that had a dedicated weight room, athletes would come and they would hang out with their teammates, hang out with other athletes and create an actual bond and friendship between the strength and conditioning staff and with other athletes.”
Athletic Alley will be open to everyone in the Chatham community, according to Trevino.
