Fall 2007
Stallings gift names new sports medicine center
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An artist’s rendering of thenew Stallings-Evans Sports Medicine Center at Carolina. The new complex will be named for Don and Billie Stallings and their late son, Eddie Evans. |
Don and Billie Stallings donated the lead gift toward a new center that will honor the memory of their son and keep his dream alive for other students.
The Stallings-Evans Sports Medicine Center will be a premier clinical and educational facility. It will provide athletic training and rehabilitation care for all students and the majority of all varsity athletes (there are about 500) at UNC.
The Stallingses gave the lead gift to build the center in honor of their late son, Eddie Evans. Don, a 1960 Carolina graduate and current member of the UNC Board of Trustees, was a three-year letterman in football. He later played professionally for the Washington Redskins.
Eddie Evans was born with a congenital heart defect, which led to his death in 2004 at the age of 41. Because he braved four life-threatening surgeries, he is considered a pioneer in open-heart surgery. “Eddie always wanted to be an athlete and was very involved in sports medicine at Arendell Parrott Academy in Kinston,” Billie Stallings said. “He always said he was going to excel in sports medicine and win a scholarship to UNC.” That dream was deferred after Eddie suffered massive cardiac arrest when he was 14 years old and remained in a coma for more than a month.
Through the center, the Stallingses hope to keep Eddie’s dream alive and serve UNC students, whether they’re varsity athletes or not. “Students at Carolina participate in more than 50 club sports, dozens of intramural events and are active every day,” said Peggy Jablonski, vice chancellor of Student Affairs. “Our students deserve top care and treatment for sports-related injuries, as well as current information on how to be active and stay healthy. This project will accomplish both of those goals.”
Because the Stallings-Evans Sports Medicine Center is a collaboration between the Division of Student Affairs (which encompasses Campus Health Services), the Department of Athletics and the Department of Exercise and Sport Science, the center will serve students in different ways. Not only will students be able to receive care, rehabilitation and athletic training there, but it will expand the clinical educational experiences for undergraduate and graduate athletic-training students.
The often-overcrowded 2,500-square-foot sports medicine facility currently located in Fetzer Gymnasium will be relocated to this state-of-the-art facility that will be in the current Women’s Gymnasium, right in the heart of campus. The new center will convert the 4,700-square-foot gym floor into an athletic training room; 3,000 square feet will be added to provide a hydrotherapy room and entrance lobby. The second floor that overlooks the new training room will feature a nutrition clinic, physician and staff office space, and a conference room. The third floor will include a renovation of the current dance studio and faculty office space.
“This project is as important to me personally and to our department as any that we have undertaken at Carolina,” said Dick Baddour, UNC athletic director. “Our student-athletes not only need a renovated and enhanced facility, they deserve it.”
By Claire Cusick
To make a gift, contact Jim Ervin in the Division of Student Affairs at 919-962-8310 or jervin1@email.unc.edu.
