Ribbon cut on Dykhouse Student-Athlete Center

A ribbon-cutting ceremony and public open house marked the official opening of the Dykhouse Student-Athlete Center at South Dakota State University on Saturday, April 24. The events were held in conjunction with the Jackrabbit football team’s annual spring game.

A 30,000-square-foot facility, the Dykhouse Student-Athlete Center:

• Houses an academic center for all SDSU student-athletes;
• Serves as the home of Jackrabbit football with coaches offices, locker room, meeting rooms, a strength and conditioning center and athletic training facilities; and
• Provides a dedicated area to showcase the program to recruits and donors.

Situated on the north end of Coughlin-Alumni Stadium, the Dykhouse Center is the first major athletic building constructed on campus since Frost Arena in 1973.

The Dykhouse Student-Athlete Center was made possible through leadership gifts from the Dana and La Dawn Dykhouse family and South Dakota businessman and philanthropist T. Denny Sanford.

The state-of-the-art locker room in the new Dykhouse Student-Athlete Center is second to none in the region.

Dana Dykhouse, president and Chief Executive Officer of First Premier Bank in Sioux Falls, is a 1979 graduate of SDSU. He lettered three years for the Jackrabbit football team, earning honorable mention all-North Central Conference honors as a defensive tackle in 1978. La Dawn Dykhouse also graduated in 1979 from SDSU, where she was a Pride of the Dakotas Dakota Deb Member. They are the parents of two children: Dan (Kristina), a 2007 alumnus and football letterwinner from 2004-06; and Alana, who will graduate from Black Hills State University this spring after lettering four times in women’s basketball.

The Chicoine Champions Room is named in recognition of a gift from the Jeff and Chris Chicoine family of Lake Forest, Ill. Jeff Chicoine is a 1968 agricultural economics graduate and a football letterwinner. The Chicoine Champions Room will serve as a hub for football recruiting and will be transformed into a donor hospitality suite on gamedays.

The Dykhouse Student-Athlete Center is a project of It Starts with STATE: A Campaign for South Dakota State University. It is the largest university fundraising drive in state history, with a working goal of $190 million. The campaign is in response to campus-wide strategic planning that developed a vision for future growth on campus.