Big Green Room

1970 Ferrum Football team pictured with coaches

Ferrum's weight room is named in honor of seven former football players and Coach Rick Tolley, who died in the Nov. 1970 Marshall plane crash.

The Big Green Room, Ferrum's weight room, is located on the lower level of the Hank Norton Center. The building opened in May 2012 and honors former Head Football Coach and Director of Athletics Hank Norton, who led the Panthers to four NJCAA national championships in 1965, 1968, 1974 and 1977, as well as a national runner-up finish in 1966.

The facility is named the Big Green Room, in honor of the seven former Ferrum football players players and Coach Rick Tolley who perished in the Marshall University airline tragedy in November of 1970. All seven of the players were part of Ferrum's 1968 national championship team, and Tolley had been Norton's first full-time assistant football coach.

In the summer of 2016, Ferrum's coaching staff along with a group of football alumni raised funds to completely renovate the weight room. The 4,000-foot Big Green Room now features:
     * Six custom-built double racks with connectors for pull-up bars and TRX suspension systems
     * Two full sets of Troy Ferrum logo dumbbells
     * Six inlaid platforms with Eleiko Olympic plates
     * Four glute-ham machines
     * 1,000 square feet of speed turf
     * Custom build resistance band training system
     * Auxiliary equipment includes Prowler sleds, medicine balls, plyo boxes, jump ropes and hurdles.

Memorial sign in honor of the seven football players and Coach Rick Tolley outside of Big Green Room

Large rack of dumbbells against a wall with two windows

Smith machine set up as a bench press in Big Green Room

A row of bench presses in the weight room

Rack holding weight lifting plates of various weights in a row

Open area with sled pushes for athletes to workout with

Zoomed out view of Big Green Room showing an open area with green carpet, 5 smith machines and a rack of weights at each one, the rack of dumbbells against the wall after the smith machines

Weighted medicine balls against a wall in the background with a squat press and a lat pulldown machine in the foreground

Row of smith machines with bench presses in the background and the green carpeted area in front

A tan painted cement block wall with a double door and a dry erase board attached to the wall

The Big Green Room has 6 smith machines, 2 sled pushes, a squat press, and a lat pull down machine.

Tan wall with attachment for working out with bands or ropes. There's 6 jumping boxes ranging in different heights.

The Official Site of the Ferrum College Panthers

Big Green Room

Ad