Oxnard College Celebrates Opening of Sports Complex : Athletics: New $5.2-million, 60,000-square-foot center culminates years of effort by educators to bring a gym to campus.

Oxnard College center Jerome Archie remembers taking a bus across town and waiting for the Santa Clara High School basketball team to finish its drills so the Oxnard Condors could take the court.

*

Tuesday afternoon, he was shooting hoops with Ventura County Community College District Chancellor Thomas G. Lakin on the hardwood in the college’s new $5.2-million sports complex.

“It’s like a new beginning,” the 20-year-old business major said at the facility’s formal dedication ceremony. “I think we’ll be a lot more competitive this year, just because of the atmosphere.”

Scores of administrators, teachers and students joined a U.S. Navy honor guard and local elected officials at the grand opening, which culminated years of effort on the part of Oxnard College physical education instructors.

The 60,000-square-foot sports center boasts numerous classrooms, four racquetball courts, specialized weight-training equipment, a physical fitness center and more. Students will have first priority to use the gymnasium, although officials said they plan to open it to the community as often as possible.

“You really can’t appreciate what we’ve gone through in the last 20 years unless you were on the teaching staff or a student,” said Juan Hernandez, the campus sports coordinator who helped oversee construction of the building.

“It’s been a long time, but it’s here, and that’s great,” he said.

Lakin told audience members at the most recent governing board meeting that he would trade baskets with any challengers at the gym’s dedication. For a few minutes Tuesday, however, he was clearly outmatched by Archie in the exhibition.

“I would have played him,” the chancellor jokingly said later. “I was just warming up. I’ve seen him play before. He’s tall, but he doesn’t move very well.”

Lakin and Trustee Gregory P. Cole swapped baskets in front of the 300 or so people who attended the dedication. Each needed the practice, however, after missing their first jump shots but then hitting some layups.

In opening remarks, college President Elise D. Schneider said she remembered her first visit to the campus five years ago when she was named to her position.

*

“I saw a lot of barren land, a lot of weeds and a sprinkling of buildings,” she told the audience. “I thought, ‘Where’s the gymnasium? There must be one.’ ”

But there was none.

“Today we are here to celebrate a landmark in the history of Oxnard College,” Schneider said.

Next on the drawing board for Oxnard College is a sprawling building for letters and science. Plans for that structure are under way now, but completion is still years off.

Despite the hoopla surrounding the formal dedication Tuesday, Hernandez said there are several things the facility needs.

A scoreboard is ordered and set to be delivered next month, and landscaping is scheduled to be completed throughout the upcoming season, Hernandez said. But the building will still lack a ticket booth and concession stand.

“We’re selling ads on the scoreboard to fund those sorts of unmet needs,” Hernandez said. “We could probably finish the ticket booth and concession stand for less than $10,000.”

*

To help raise the money, the Oxnard College Classified Senate, a group made up of the campus’s non-teaching staff, was selling satin-finished brass leaves to be hung on a custom-designed oak tree that will be displayed in the gym’s foyer for $25 each.

College Vice President Irene Pinkard urged audience members at the dedication to spend $10 on personal messages that will be placed into a time capsule to be opened in two decades.

Sophomore guard Dustin Spoor, a 22-year-old physical therapy major, said the Condors would play with much more confidence on a home court of their own.

“It’s a lot more comforting having your own gym,” he said. “It’ll make the rest of the players better and motivate them to work a lot harder.”

The Condor basketball season opens Nov. 11, but the first home game in the new building is set for the next day.