BOULDER, Colo. — Recovery methods for college athletes have evolved from traditional ice baths to high-tech equipment.
But at the University of Colorado Boulder, track and field athlete James Overberg took his own approach: building a custom sauna for his teammates.
The idea started in an off-campus house where Overberg and several teammates were living together.
“There was a shed in the backyard, and there was a spot in the breaker, and we were going to put a hot tub there,” Overberg said. “But one of my teammates was like, ‘Well, what if we built a sauna?’”
The group began researching and building their own.
"It's very much a budget sauna because, you know, we're five broke college kids,” Overberg laughed. “We built the budget sauna, and then it piqued the interest of our coach.”
Soon after, the idea expanded into something bigger for the team.
“He wanted to do something a little more upscale and something for easy access for the team,” Overberg said. “And he asked me if I could do it. And I said, yeah. I was like, ‘I can handle this.’”
Designing the sauna, housed inside the team's practice facility, brought a few challenges.
"The biggest challenge for this one was optimizing seating space” to fit as many people as possible, he said. “It's a very unique space in there. It's not like just a square, and that's the reason why we wanted to build a custom one.”
Capacity was a key factor in the design.
“It's not very useful to the team if three guys are going at a time versus 10-12,” Overberg said.
He also found opportunities to add his own design touches.
“My favorite design choice, and kind of, like, where I got to be a little creative with design, is the ceiling light,” he said.
Building a sauna from scratch can be expensive, but Overberg said the team kept costs down.
“An eight to 12 person sauna from a company could cost upward $50,000 or more,” he said.
Instead, the goal was to build a high-quality version at a fraction of that price.
“My coach wanted to keep it in the house, because it's kind of cool, you know, a CU athlete building something for the CU program,” Overberg said.
“But on top of that, we could have made it cheaper. The goal was to keep it around $10,000 to $12,000.”
For Overberg, the project was about more than just recovery.
“To leave an impact on a program has been a large motivation, whether that's the culture or something more physical, like this,” he said. “And I hope I can leave here and years down the road and look back and say I had an impact on the program and have pride in that.”
After building two saunas from scratch, Overberg joked that the experience might even turn into a future business.
