WT athletic center gift helps Buffs share their pride

As the West Texas A&M University football team fights for a playoff spot, it prepares for games this year in new facilities thanks in part to a large gift to the university through its Share your Pride fundraising campaign, Athletic Director Michael McBroom said.

First United Bank President Ray Bain and wife Barbara, who attended the university in the late 1950s and early 1960s, watched their son, Mike, play on the football team in the 1980s and are longtime Buffs fans.

Once they heard of the campaign in 2010, they wanted to help the university build sports facilities and found an opportunity to help fund a new athletic center that now bears their last name, Ray Bain said.

Bain did not disclose how much he and his wife donated to the university to build the $4-million Bain Athletic Center that is being constructed in three phases.

“I would say it’s pretty sizable,” Bain said. “It ran up close to a seven-figure amount.”

The university launched the public portion of the $35-million fundraising campaign in August. The campaign hopes to raise $15 million for scholarships, $8 million for
faculty and program support, and $12 million for capital projects.

The athletic center sits on the west side of Buffalo Sports Park on campus and houses a 6,700-square-foot football locker room that has lockers, showers, laundry facilities, equipment storage space and a place to review game film, McBroom said.

McBroom said the facility marks the first time the football team has had its own locker room in three years. He said the football facilities previously were spread out throughout campus and players would often change into their equipment in their dorm rooms.

The team now has a place to shower, change clothes and watch game film in one location next to their practice facility, McBroom said.

“The ability to have 140 football players in a locker room and to be able to quickly shower and get back to their classes or grab dinner after practice, our coaches can get the laundry done all in one place and we’re not hauling stuff around, it’s very nice, very convenient,” he said. “It’s the best locker room the school has ever had.”

Mike Bain, who now is executive vice president of First United Bank, said the athletic center is something the university has talked about for a long time, and he is proud his parents were able to be a substantial part of its creation.

“It’s been an ongoing love of theirs to give back to WT,” he said. “When this athletic center came about, this has obviously been in the works for many, many years and with the new sports complex, the athletic center was kind of the crown jewel or the finishing building out there.”

McBroom said the athletic center eventually will include a weight room, athletic training facilities, an academic support area, office space for coaches and staff, and a champions atrium to honor alumni and Buffs sports history.

“We’ve kind of been spread out all over campus for 50 to 60 years,” McBroom said. “What it will ultimately enable us to do is get everybody or the majority of people under one roof and gives us a centralized location for athletic training.”

He said all of the 440 athletes on the university’s sports teams eventually will be able to use the weight rooms and training rooms once they are completed.

“It’s been very satisfying to know where we were with our facilities, which was certainly not great, to now walk out and know that we have some of the best facilities of really any school in the country in athletics,” McBroom said.