“Working with Samson is personal to me, because I’m working with Scott”
-Ben Pollard, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach
The Wolfpack new weight room was installed in the old wrestling mat room on their high school campus. Coach Pollard wanted to increase his foot print in his facility as well as provide a weight room where students would be proud to be a part of. This weight room layout was planned in a way to help transition very quickly into the next section of student’s training programs to assist Coach Pollard in his efficiency. The Wolf Pack weight room featured 10 of the Samson Flex-Rack Series Half Racks and combo benches. These racks were equipped with team branded chin bar graphic shields.
Whitefield Academy
Smyrna, Georgia
Inside the Whitefield Academy weight room
Whitefield Academy in Smyrna, Georgia converted a former wrestling mat room into a weight room intended to make students proud of the space and help the coaching staff run training efficiently. The photos and video on this page document the finished training environment and show how equipment, storage, branding, and open floor area work together as one system. For coaches and administrators planning a similar project, the value of the gallery is in the relationships between those elements, not just in any single rack or machine.
Equipment and layout highlights
The Wolfpack facility features 10 Samson Flex-Rack Series half racks, combo benches, and team-branded chin-bar graphic shields. The gallery and video show how the stations were organized inside the existing room. Each selection supports a specific job in the room. Primary lifting stations establish the main training lanes, benches and attachments expand exercise options, and dedicated storage keeps plates, bars, dumbbells, bands, and accessories close to where they are used. That organization can reduce unnecessary traffic and help a coaching staff move groups through training with fewer interruptions.
Design lessons from this project
Adaptive reuse starts with the constraints of the current building. The layout has to respect room dimensions, entrances, structural limits, and circulation while still creating fast transitions between parts of the training program. A productive layout begins with the program: expected group size, coaching sightlines, exercise flow, available square footage, ceiling height, entrances, turf or platform transitions, and the equipment the staff uses most often. Planning those details together helps prevent a room from becoming a collection of disconnected pieces.
Branding can reinforce identity, but it works best when it is integrated into functional equipment and durable surfaces. Graphic shields, logo platforms, upholstery, and coordinated colors give a facility a consistent appearance without replacing the practical work of spacing, storage, and equipment selection. The goal is a room that looks like the program and continues to operate efficiently during busy team sessions.
Planning a school or university weight room
Schools renovating existing rooms, repurposing athletic space, or trying to improve training flow without constructing a new building should begin by documenting how the room is used now and what needs to improve. List the number of athletes expected in each group, the movements that require dedicated stations, storage problems, accessibility needs, and any future expansion. From there, compare layouts by training capacity and workflow rather than by equipment count alone. A smaller number of well-planned stations can serve a program better than a crowded floor that limits coaching and movement.
Samson Equipment works with programs from early planning through manufacturing and installation. Explore our custom weight room solutions, review the design and manufacturing process, or start a conversation about your facility.
