As a top-notch center of intercollegiate athletics and robust campus and community programming, the Beeghly Physical Education Center at Youngstown State University has stood for more than 51 years as a crown jewel in the Mahoning Valley.

Over those years, the thousands of games and special events that have played out there, the hundreds of thousands of patrons who have passed through its doors and the natural wear and tear of rough and rugged daily use have taken their toll on the mammoth 200,000-square-foot arena, natatorium and teaching center.

Fortunately for YSU and the community at large, athletic leaders at the university over the past five decades have acted as responsible caretakers of the center to make sure it remained a viable campus and community asset.

In recent years, one guardian angel over Beeghly has loomed particularly large — Jerrod Calhoun, head men’s basketball coach for the past seven years.

Not only did Calhoun lead the Penguin hoopsters to their best season in history including a Horizon League championship last year, he has been equally vigilant ensuring the physical space in which his teams play rises to his sky-high standards of excellence.

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve been on a mission to upgrade the facility,” Calhoun told this newspaper’s sports reporter Neel Madhavan.

Throughout his tenure, Calhoun has stayed steadfastly faithful to that commitment.

Since his arrival in Youngstown in 2017, the Beeghly Center has undergone several significant upgrades. Those include modernizing and enhancing the men’s and women’s basketball offices and hallways in 2017 and 2018, installing better lighting in the lobby and updating the Coaches Court in 2019, improving the weight rooms in 2021, renovating the women’s basketball locker room in 2022, building a family sports medicine center, completing a new academic area and others.

His latest shot perhaps ranks as one of the most significant enhancements for the center in its history. Beginning at spring semester’s end in early May, a $2 million project will commence to replace the upper and lower seats on both sides of the sprawling arena with new Penguin red seatbacks for added comfort and leg room for the university’s growing fan base. That’s a noteworthy investment considering it cost only $5 million to build the complex.

It’s important to note here that this massive makeover will not chip away at one red penny of the university’s funds from student tuition or state assistance. Calhoun, along with Athletic Director Ron Strollo and other athletic department officials, launched a major fundraising campaign that netted about $3 million. Such generous giving from individuals and institutions in the Valley speaks to the pride our region invests in the university in general and the Beeghly Center in particular.

Collectively, that major upgrade and others before it bode well for the campus and the community.

For YSU, the Beeghly renovations enhance its overall image and makes it more competitive in the never-ending quest to attract athletes and students.

For the community, it provides not only a more relaxing and attractive center of athletic spectacle on game nights. It also can better serve its auxiliary purposes as a center for major events from political rallies to exhibitions to concerts featuring national headliners.

With better seating, it can better compete with the slightly larger Covelli Centre and slightly smaller Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre downtown. Such successes then can breed additional successes.

Of course, once the brand spanking new seating replacements are in place this fall, the need for close oversight of Beeghly Center clearly will not end. As time marches on, so, too, will the need for additional improvements and renovations.

Strollo and others already have worked proactively to compile a wish list of additional renovations for the center. Toward that end, we hope that with Calhoun and Strollo at the helm, others in the athletic department follow their lead as aggressive and winning cheerleaders and fundraisers.

Given the center’s history of reinvestment to keep up with the times, we’re confident its momentum will not go bust and the successes of Calhoun and company will multiply. In so doing, the crowning jewel that is the Beeghly Center will shine even brighter into the years and decades to come.

editorial@vindy.com