Sports museum shines light on Aggie success

Campus has many places to offer to students. The libraries serve as homes when coursework gets tough and popular dining spots where you and your friends break for a bite to eat in between classes.

 So where can you go on-campus to view years of Aggie history in sports and memorabilia? The Texas A&M Sports Museum at the Zone in Kyle Field offers all this and more, standing as the only sports museum funded solely by former athletes.

Cathy Capps is the director of the letterman's association and part of the committee that puts together the sports museum. The committee consists of former A&M athletes of all different sports that come together to fundraise, design and determine the exhibitions of the museum.

"We opened the doors in 2002. This is the tenth year it's open. We had a capital campaign and raised 100 percent of the money for the museum just within our membership of former athletes, not from any outside or corporate donations," Capps said. "They wanted to raise the money themselves and then give the museum back to the public and A&M as a gift to the university for all that they received as athletes here."

Capps said there are plans to renovate the museum and bring in more interactive technology in the next few years.

"Technology changes so quickly, ten years ago what we had in there was state of the art and now it's completely outdated and we want to keep the museum fresh and relevant. Just give it a whole facelift," Capps said.  "We also have an opportunity to possibly have a new building on-campus, we're waiting to see if that panes out, that's a more ideal place for us to relocate the museum, to a larger area with more convenient parking for visitors, it would be close and on-campus but not as land locked so we'd have more space to do more interesting things with our exhibits."

Capps said the committee is made up of 13 former athletes who meet every year to keep the museum updated with current accomplishments.

"One of the agreements we all made collectively as a group is once there is an accomplished showcased in the museum, it would never be taken down so we either have to reconfigure it or make more space, so that's one of the challenges we have," Capps said "We keep adding to it. That's one of the reasons we want to integrate more interactive rather than static pictures. We're winning championships left and right and we've got a lot of good things going on."

Capps said the one of her favorite parts of the museum is the wide display of all A&M sports.

 "What's special about the museum is it's not just a football or a basketball museum either, we have exhibits for all the sports, we have swimming and diving, and tennis and that's something that was really important to our board of directors, that every sport had an area that they could showcase."

The sports museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. People who want to see Kyle Field can come through the sports museum and volunteers show visitors out to Kyle Field and give them history of the museum as they go.

Ted Lowe, class of '58 and a former yell leader, volunteers at the sports museum. He said after his career in the Air force and insurance business, he was fortunate enough to come back to A&M and take the opportunity to work on the museum.

"I had the opportunity to be a junior yell leader, a head leader, with my classmates we had Greg as the coach, we had great football and around 2001 that was around the time the museum opened up and they were looking for volunteers so I took that opportunity. I love the school. It changed my life," Lowe said.

Lowe said the spirit section is a part of the museum he really enjoys showing incoming students as they attend their NSC. He said he believes any student who hasn't seen the museum is missing out.

Aneesa Karim, a senior sociology major, said that before graduating she intends to visit the museum.

"A museum honoring A&M past and current achievements is definitely something I'd be interested in visiting" Karim said. "The legacy of A&M's athletes and accomplishments lives on through the museum."