Archbishop Murphy unveils new Wellness & Performance Center

Published 8:00 am Friday, August 22, 2025

EVERETT — After around eight years in the making, Archbishop Murphy High School realized a major upgrade to their athletic facilities.

The school officially opened its new Performance & Wellness Center on Thursday, a 3,400 square foot weight room and training facility built off of Grace Hall and overlooking Terry Ennis Stadium. The project, budgeted around $1.5 million and subject to increase, according to Director of Performance and Wellness Jordan James, has been in the works since 2017.

“We are working on continuing to bolster that,” James said. “We haven’t met that goal yet, you know, in terms of hitting that 1.5 (million) number in terms of spending.”

Archbishop Murphy Development Director Bobby Kubacki estimates the new center will be paid off in the next five years. The center was entirely funded by donations, according to James, but the school is also “working on a couple grants.” NFL players and Archbishop Murphy alumni Abraham Lucas and Kyler Gordon both held football camps at the school earlier this summer and have been approached about providing financial support to the project, potentially in exchange for naming rights to the building, but nothing has been settled. Kubacki said there are “lots of naming opportunities from a campaign standpoint” that the school hopes to get finalized over the next couple months.

“Still need to finish paying for the building. … We have a pretty significant amount that we’re aiming to raise here to support physical buildings,” Kubacki said. “But also improve our wellness program, our endowment, all of our other things that it costs to operate a school. So the next five years, I think we’ll be in a good spot.”

After getting their old weight room’s flooring installed in 2017 by PLAE, a company that designs weight rooms for collegiate teams across the country, a representative approached James about the outdoor space next to the existing facility.

“He’s like, ‘Hey, you ever thought about covering this?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure, when I got a million dollars,’” James said. “I said it joking, and he’s like ‘Well let me draw something up for you.’”

James kept the file in his drawer for months, and when the school’s annual DREAM Auction Fund-A-Need — which raises money to enhance Student Support Services — came around, James was approached about ideas he had to improve physical wellness on campus. He presented the file he had in his desk, and the plan was set into motion. After years of fundraising and planning, they broke ground in October 2024 with the services of Gaffney Construction, and it was completed in mid-July.

Some of the equipment carried over from the original weight room, but the new one is stocked with seven squat racks equipped with a velocity-based training device, which uses a camera to track the speed of the barbell and offer corrections to supplement James’ coaching. Four television screens are suspended on the wall, displaying educational and nutritional information, and shelves of dumbbells and stacks of pads are among the exercise equipment lining the walls.

However, the biggest upgrade that the new performance center provides, according to James, is space. Nearly doubling the size of their previous weight room, the school can better accommodate their eight weight training classes. In addition to bolstering the training experience for the sports team and weight training classes, the school plans to bring every student in once a week during physical education classes, which is what excites James the most.

“My favorite times in here, hands down, are when I get a student that has never stepped foot in the space,” James said. “Doesn’t know the difference between a barbell or a dumbbell or a kettlebell, and you look six months down the road and they’re getting up from an exercise (where) they were pushing themselves, and they’re high-fiving their peers that they never talked to.”

The facility will also be open for students to use before and after school. Beyond the students, the school has already used the space to host public camps for local sixth-to-eighth graders this summer prior to the official unveiling. Overall, the new Performance & Wellness Center aims to boost Archbishop Murphy’s promotion of physical wellness and its relationship with mental and spiritual wellness.

It’s a far cry from 20 years ago, when Blaine Smith — the school’s first weight training instructor — would walk students to a weight club in nearby Buffalo Square to train before even the old weight room was built. Standing inside the new facility on Thursday, Smith couldn’t help but think of the difference.

“I’m really impressed, and maybe a little jealous,” said Smith, who joined the school in 2002 and retired in 2018. “But that’s okay. I think it’s great. It’s really going to serve us well. It’s going to serve the student body and hopefully the faculty and staff take advantage of it, too, because this is really a wonderful facility.”