Center of Excellence is no longer just a dream

Standing on the site that in 18 months will boast the $22.5 million USSA Center of Excellence, one of the men who helped make the dream of such a facility possible, Park City Mayor Dana Williams, may have put it best during Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony. 
    “One reporter asked me earlier if I thought this was appropriate development for the entry statement into Park City. And I said, ‘Have you seen the other ones?’ I think it rocks,” Williams said to a rousing laugh from the crowd of USSA dignitaries, athletes and numerous financial supporters.
    “This is about legacy, this is about pride and what we think about our community and what we’re willing to do to prove that. This is about the legacy of the [Olympic] Games and what they meant to us and what it means to us to be a venue city. I think we do take that very seriously.”
    Located on the eastern side of Park City, adjacent to the city’s sports fields complex near the junction of U.S. Route 40 and State Route 248, the Center of Excellence is one of the most ambitious undertakings in the history of USSA.

PARK CITY, Utah — Standing on the site that in 18 months will boast the $22.5 million USSA Center of Excellence, one of the men who helped make the dream of such a facility possible, Park City Mayor Dana Williams, may have put it best during Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony. 
    “One reporter asked me earlier if I thought this was appropriate development for the entry statement into Park City. And I said, ‘Have you seen the other ones?’ I think it rocks,” Williams said to a rousing laugh from the crowd of USSA dignitaries, athletes and numerous financial supporters.
    “This is about legacy, this is about pride and what we think about our community and what we’re willing to do to prove that. This is about the legacy of the [Olympic] Games and what they meant to us and what it means to us to be a venue city. I think we do take that very seriously.”
    Located on the eastern side of Park City, adjacent to the city’s sports fields complex near the junction of U.S. Route 40 and State Route 248, the Center of Excellence is one of the most ambitious undertakings in the history of USSA. Spearheaded by current USSA President Bill Marolt, the 10-year Legacy Campaign of fundraising raised $60 million, of which $22.5 million will be used to construct the 85,000-square-foot facility and the remainder will be placed in an endowment to sustain it for the long term. The endowment, through the support of generous contributors, is already adding more than $1 million a year into athletic development.
    “We are an athlete-centric organization, and this building has been designed to help our athletes be successful,” said USSA Chairman Dexter Paine. “It is built so that we can do all of our activities under one roof, with state-of-the-art equipment, with coaching on-site so we can take the program to the next level.”
    Marolt, Williams and Paine were joined by Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and U.S. nordic combined athlete Bill Demong as featured speakers Wednesday. Demong, who captured a silver medal at the World Championships in Japan last season, showed off that piece of hardware while thanking his coaches and the USSA Sports Science staff, adding that the completion of the center will help ensure the future success of U.S. athletes.
    “[I’ve attained] a level that I’ve never had in 10 years. I was able to win a silver medal at the World Championships and bring that home. But here, I’m not alone,” Demong said. “Many of these athletes [in the crowd] have medals, and I think what we see about this Center of Excellence is that the future holds more, not only hardware, but success for ourselves and the kids who will follow us down the road.”
    The center is designed for use by not only national team athletes but also USSA’s 400-plus club, will include a sports medicine center, sport performance facilities (state-of-the-art gymnasium, weight room, cardio respiratory, recovery and rehab center, ramps and tramps area), nutrition center, as well as education and equipment facilities.
    Olympic champion Ted Ligety, former moguls world champion Nate Roberts and Demong were among a large group of people who participated in the traditional shoveling ceremony with an athlete from each sport governed by USSA. The group included alpiner Lindsey Kildow, cross-country racer Andy Newell, snowboarder Graham Watanabe and sit-skier Chris Klebl.
    “Today is a landmark day in the history of our organization,” Marolt said. “I’m standing here and thinking back over the past 10 years when we started to visualize and think about what we needed to do to take the next step, to bring this program to the next higher level so we could compete with the best in the world. We’ve worked hard and had tremendous support, and as we stand here today … you stand here with a sense of pride, with a sense of accomplishment, but knowing we’ve had a tremendous team of individuals and organizations and people that have made this all possible.”
    Ligety, who’s been a member of the U.S. alpine team for four years, said Wednesday that the facility will be “a big step above anything in Europe especially.”
    “It’s super important for us and for future generations," Ligety said. "Even in the last four years I’ve been on the team, we had one little gym in the bay of the cement plant over there [across the road from the new facility], and then now we’re in the bay of the Utah Power Company, so it’s going to be good to have our own space, and have it be ours.”
    USSA, which has had a presence in Park City since 1974, is one of the largest employers in the community with 150 employees, most of which are based in Utah. Many of its nearly 200 national team athletes live at least part-time in Park City. USSA manages year-round nationwide development and elite programs including the national teams in six Olympic sports — alpine, cross-country, freestyle, nordic combined, ski jumping and snowboarding — as well as two Paralympic sports — disabled alpine and disabled cross-country. It provides programs and education for more than 30,000 athletes, officials and coaches in clubs across the country.