Notre Dame has pulled back the curtain on its new football home, and the first look inside Shields Family Hall shows a facility built to be much more than a locker room upgrade.
The 150,000-square-foot building expands the footprint of the existing Guglielmino Athletics Complex by nearly 50 percent, giving the Irish a much larger base than the Gug, which opened in 2005.
A 4-minute, 20-second video released by Notre Dame walks through the front door and straight into the football side of the building. The first stop is the Sherin Family Locker Room, where the team will spend plenty of its off-field time and where the modern amenities are front and center.
One detail that stands out: a ping pong table, a favorite game of Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr.
From there, the video moves into the players’ lounge, which includes big televisions, a barber shop and space built for lounging and recovery. The lounge sits near the new training room, located directly across from the Irish Athletic Complex.
Shields Hall also includes the Eilers Family Sports Performance Center, named for Notre Dame safety Pat Eilers. The building’s meeting spaces are just as polished, with offensive and defensive rooms that feature stadium seating.
For bigger team gatherings, there’s the Dave and Clare Butler Auditorium, named in part for Dave Butler, who played linebacker for the Irish.
The final stop is the Patrick Kramer Dining Room, which the football team will share with other Notre Dame student-athletes. Pat Kramer is a former Notre Dame defensive lineman, and former Irish cornerback Tom Carter also supported the project.
The facility takes its name from Jack Shields, a former Notre Dame linebacker who led a group of former Irish football players in providing major support for the new football building.
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