Queen’s football head coach Steve Snyder is a big fan of mottoes and metaphors. They’re everywhere inside and outside his team’s stunning new locker room at Richardson Stadium. Near the entrance, for instance, is a wheelbarrow full of bricks with messages written on them like “One rep at a time.” On the pillars surrounding the big Q in the centre of the room are reminders like “Reset, stay steady” and “Attack and finish.” On a wall of the nearby Athletic Therapy Room: “Mind, body, ready to play.”
“Anything you see written here is stuff that we repeat over and over to the team,” says Mr. Snyder. “I think it’s really important to have that reinforcement in anything you’re doing, but especially in sports.”
Mr. Snyder has been repeating those messages ever since he became the head coach in 2019. Back then, the team was split between two rooms in a building with just 84 small metal lockers – many of them banged up and held together with two-by-fours. So, when the two-storey Lang Pavilion opened in September 2023 – the final piece of the Richardson Stadium revitalization project – and the spacious new digs were revealed, “it was a whole different world,” says Mr. Snyder. “We felt like we were home.”
The new locker room and the adjoining washrooms, therapy space, coaches’ offices, and meeting areas make this facility one of the best in Canadian university sports, says Mr. Snyder.
“It’s perfect, we love it. But, first and foremost, this is the players’ room, it’s for them. And it’s an equal room – every player gets the same quality of locker – and it focuses on bringing the team together. That’s why we call it the Unity Room.”
