Why Arizona needed to upgrade its football facility — and how Jedd Fisch helped make it happen – Southernminn.com

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Jedd Fisch’s slogans are everywhere in the remodeled Lowell-Stevens Football Facility.
Players who take advantage of the free barber shop at the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility get an eyeful of the Wildcats’ core values.
New coach Jedd Fisch said he wanted the remodeled Lowell-Stevens Football Facility to “feel Arizona.”
Arizona defensive lineman JB Brown gets a haircut from Ronnie Palonino inside the UA football program’s new in-house barbershop at Lowell-Stevens Football Facility. 

Players who take advantage of the free barber shop at the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility get an eyeful of the Wildcats’ core values.
Arizona defensive lineman JB Brown gets a haircut from Ronnie Palonino inside the UA football program’s new in-house barbershop at Lowell-Stevens Football Facility. 
Like the team on the field, the Arizona Wildcats’ football facility is under construction.
The digital media room is still being built. The players’ lounge is still being remodeled. Those projects, and a handful of others, will continue into the season.
The rest of the place is open for business. The Lowell-Stevens Football Facility, which first opened its doors in 2013 and abuts the north end of Arizona Stadium, is functional and fresh. It bears little resemblance to the stale office space Jedd Fisch and his staff inherited in late December.
After months of planning, fundraising and collaboration, a renovation that began May 1 and would make Chip and Joanna Gaines proud is nearing completion. Almost everything is new, from the furniture in the coaches’ offices to the equipment in the weight room. Inspirational quotes and catchphrases cover the walls, which are splashed in blue and red. Every off-white leather seat in the team meeting room — all 150 of which are new — has a Block A imbedded in the backrest.
“I wanted it to feel Arizona,” Fisch said recently while giving a reporter a guided tour.
New coach Jedd Fisch said he wanted the remodeled Lowell-Stevens Football Facility to “feel Arizona.”
The first-year UA coach wanted to make sure everyone who walks into the building — whether it’s a coach, a player, a recruit or his parents — knows what program LSFF represents. And what the program aims to exemplify.
“Anytime you change a culture,” said Matthew Hayes, Arizona’s associate athletic director of football operations, “there’s a lot of aspects that you have to look at and evaluate — and make sure that the key stakeholders that you’re changing the culture for have different areas to connect with. Physical connection is very important.”
When Hayes first arrived in January, after a two-day drive from Seattle, Fisch toured him through the building. They finished in the team meeting room. Fisch asked: “So, what do you think?” Hayes replied: “I think you need new chairs.”
Although LSFF had been around for only eight years, it was starting to show its age. It needed more than a makeover.
As anyone who’s remodeled a home knows, these things cost money. To do everything Fisch wanted to do would run about $6 million. The UA athletic department, facing a significant revenue shortfall because of the pandemic, didn’t have that kind of cash lying around. So who paid for all this?
“Very simply, it was all paid for through donations; it’s all been privately funded,” UA athletic director Dave Heeke said. “Our donors were tremendous. They see the vision. They share the vision, the enthusiasm about our football program.
“We needed to have a wow factor, an impact factor. We also needed to be more functional. The structure in our football program staffing-wise and duty-wise is different than how it was designed.
“It was really about going out and sharing that story with people, and they jumped on board very quickly.”
Fisch spearheaded that effort, but he was hardly alone.
“Everything is a team,” he said.
Jedd Fisch’s slogans are everywhere in the remodeled Lowell-Stevens Football Facility.
Fisch’s wife, Amber, played a key role in fundraising and adding personal touches to the design. Fisch met regularly with Heeke’s top lieutenants, Erika Barnes and Derek van der Merwe, among others, to figure out how to make it happen.
Fisch knew that to keep pace in recruiting, Arizona needed a facility that could “compare and compete with anybody.” The digital media room will feature broadcast and podcast studios. The players’ lounge will have an area devoted to the “Fifth Quarter” — life after football — as well as ample space to nap or play games. A barber shop has been built on the loft level that overlooks the weight room.
“In 2021,” Fisch said, “that’s what college facilities are.”
Although attracting recruits is a critical and ongoing mission, the remodeling of LSFF is about more than creating an elegantly staged open house. Fisch and his staff spend the majority of their time there. Players, whose careers can last four, five or even six years, pop in and out daily.
“The goal is to give the guys a good place to work,” Fisch said. “A home.”
Contact sports reporter Michael Lev at 573-4148 or mlev@tucson.com. On Twitter @michaeljlev 
This article originally ran on tucson.com.
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