The Student Recreation Center has been the go-to workout facility for the Texas State community since its opening in 1994. With a wide variety of activities available and a focus on wellness beyond the traditional workout, the Rec Center has remained the top workout facility for students and faculty even throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Rec Center hosts a myriad of recreational and workout opportunities, including a climbing wall, a swimming pool, individual workout spaces and more. It hosts group exercise classes, sports clubs and even has its own smoothie shop. 

The center’s services strive to encompass all types of recreational activities through the Outdoor Center at Sewell Park, which rents outdoor equipment such as paddleboards and tubes, and University Camp, a 125-acre campground dedicated to outdoor recreation for the university community. 

To adapt to the limits of the pandemic, the Rec Center now offers a full menu of live and on-demand virtual exercise classes. It recently added a nutrition coaching program to its diverse list of services, a program in which students and faculty can meet with a registered dietitian and dietetic intern to discuss nutrition strategies and have food-related questions answered. 

Along with making changes to its layout to provide socially distanced workouts, the facility now requires visitors to schedule a reservation to avoid exceeding restricted capacity levels. Dr. Christy Nolan, director of the Student Recreation Center, says the facility has seen success during the past year.

“We have received very positive feedback on how these offerings have assisted students with their needs due to scheduling constraints, lack of parking and a number of other variables that could prevent a patron from physically coming to our facility during the pandemic,” Nolan says.

The Recreation Center’s mission is to provide a safe, welcoming space for the Texas State community to engage in recreational and wellness activities. Nolan says this goal has not changed, despite the pandemic.

“We are striving to encourage wellness by creating new programs, such as the nutrition coaching, and attempting to meet patrons in their space through virtual live and on-demand offerings,” Nolan says. “As [COVID-19] parameters change, in either direction, we are consistently re-evaluating what we can offer and how we offer programming.”

For information about recreation program availability and scheduling during COVID-19, visit the Student Recreation Center website.

2nd Place: Texas Health and Racquet Club

3rd Place: Pure Barre