‘It needed a facelift’: Eastern Washington football makes upgrade to locker rooms

Ryan Sawyer remembers the pride players had for the Eastern Washington University football locker room when he coached the team’s defensive line and served as the program’s recruiting coordinator from 2008-2015.

That pride – his own included – is being invigorated with a face-lift to that locker room – a “safe space” as Sawyer calls it.

More than 20 years after the Eagles originally moved into their new digs, Sawyer’s Painting is one of the contractors providing services toward a renovation project funded with a more than $100,000 donation provided by the Eagle Football Network, a group comprised mostly of former Eastern players, coaches and staff.

“In conversations with the EWU coaching staff, we identified a dire need for a significant locker room update,” said Paul Terrell, a former player and one of the members of EFN’s board of directors. “It needed a face-lift.”

The project includes restoring and painting all existing lockers plus other enhancements that have been completed. Terrell said the second phase of providing new storage, hooks, molding, powder coating, graphics and signage will occur in mid-May.

The Eagle Football Network members curated vendors, obtained discounts and donations, sourced materials and are donating time and labor to significantly improve the form and function of the locker room.

Sawyer transitioned from business owner to painter to help during the three-week process to renovate the lockers.

“I thought it would be cool to go out there and be a part of that,” he said. “That was the first time I have been on a job site in about a year and a half. It was a merging of pride. The fact it may be the last job I actually get my hands dirty on is kind of neat and ironic.”

He admits his current roles for his business are to “consult and cast the vision,” but he said he looked forward to returning to a room he helped clean, rearrange and vacuum on the eves of recruiting visits he coordinated.

“It resonated with me because my heart in that program was in the recruiting process,” he said. “It was fun to be a part of something that I knew would not only improve the experience of the player that was in the locker room already, but I know how important it is for a recruit to walk on campus and be excited about the look. I want Eastern to be a bit more proud to walk somebody into that space.”

Most important, he knows what a unique and special place it is to the players.

“It’s their safe space, to be able to go there no matter wherever they are in life. It’s as individual as a bedroom, and a place to go to hang out with teammates and know other people from the outside aren’t really welcome there. As a coach, I didn’t walk in there just to walk in there – I didn’t want to encroach on their space.”

While on the job site, Sawyer’s biggest goal was to keep the job on schedule so it could be used by EWU for its April spring practice schedule, which ends Friday with the Red-White Game at 6 p.m. at Roos Field. His biggest worry was if the paint didn’t cure in time.

“That would have been a nightmare,” he said.

But the paint did cure and the project received rousing reviews from EWU player Robert Mason III, better known by coaches and teammates as “Tre.”

“You don’t realize how much that locker room truly means to players,” he said of the extended time the players had to stay out of the locker room during the renovation process. “We’re super grateful, and when we saw it for the first time, we were in awe. We know of the great, memorable things that happen in that locker room, and to see it now makes it super special. Words can’t describe how grateful we are.”

Now in his fourth season as an Eagle after transferring from Central Washington, Mason’s greatest memories in the locker room are the table tennis battles that would be waged well into the night as well as the postgame celebration after EWU’s 34-28 win over fourth-ranked Montana in 2021.

“It makes us realize how much we have to rebuild, and make a comeback from last year’s 3-8 season,” he said. “We want to keep that torch lit from the players that came before us.”

Eastern head coach Aaron Best, who has spent three decades in the program as a player and coach, praised Terrell and Eastern graduate Landon Luiten from EFN for getting the project kick-started, as well as many others – Eastern administrators Shari McMahon, Lynn Hickey, Mary Voves, Barb Richey and Rich Rasmussen – that helped the “Gift in Place” come to fruition.

“A lot of people had some great ideas and put a lot of energy and effort into it,” Best said.

“It’s a huge project, and it’s been needed for a while. Everything that has been done up to this point looks amazingly awesome. There is just a different vibe in there – it looks different, it feels different and there is a little more energy in there. We’re very thankful and very blessed that the EFN group put that together and drove the project.”

The Eagle Football Network was formed in 2018 to provide connections, mentorship and fundraising on behalf of the EWU football program. Besides the cash funding given by EFN members toward the project, contributions were made by several people with connections to Cheney and EWU.

“We’re proud to be able to help EWU with a new project to help update some facilities,” said Terrell, a former EWU offensive lineman and now a graphic artist who provided design services to the endeavor. “It’s nice to have so many Cheney and EWU ties to it.”

When Best played, Eastern’s football locker room was a long, cramped area on the East end of the lower level of Reese Court. But upon return of the Seattle Seahawks’ training camp to Cheney in 1997, a more spacious locker room and coaches offices were designed and built in the physical education complex because of the overlap of practices in August for the two teams.

“Once I bring up what it was like back when I played, the players just tune you out,” Best said. “But it was certainly different. To have a conversation in the locker room now, you are within about 25 feet of everybody if you’re standing in the middle of the room. Back then, you were about 25 yards away from some of the guys at the end of the row of lockers.

“There is an appreciation knowing it wasn’t always like this. That’s important.”

The Seahawks, who had training camp in Cheney from 1976-85 and 1997-2006, never used the new locker room space, but the Eagle Football program has since 2001. With players using the locker room in various ways, they tend to spend more time there during a typical day than apartments or dorm rooms.

After two decades, the lockers have been showing wear and tear, and Best knew a face-lift would help renew a sense of pride in his team.

“You do it for your football family first, and then hope that enhances the football family in the future,” he said. “The newness of something in a place we hold sacred makes it that much more special. The guys hang out, play games, watch film, dress and have some of their greatest memories in that room.”