Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:52:00

Seven varsity sports share one roof in the newest corner of Ohio State's athletics district. The Covelli Center at 2640 Fred Taylor Drive in Columbus opened on 4 June 2019 after two years of construction, a 48.9-million-dollar, 100,000-square-foot arena designed by Moody Nolan with Populous and built by Gilbane, seating 3,700 with standing room. It gave permanent competition homes to Buckeye wrestling, men's and women's volleyball, men's and women's gymnastics and both fencing programs - more than 150 student-athletes - while moonlighting as an occasional venue for women's basketball, high-school tournaments, camps and campus ceremonies. The building was engineered for quick changes: the floor reconfigures between wrestling mats, volleyball courts, gymnastics podiums and fencing strips, supported by ten locker rooms, seven coaching suites, sports-medicine and athletic-training space, team meeting rooms and study areas. The attached Jennings Family Wrestling Practice Facility gives one of the nation's premier wrestling programs a dedicated training home, and the men's volleyball staff called the building the best facility for the sport in the country when it opened. The arena hosts roughly 50 to 60 home competitions a year - Big Ten wrestling duals that pack the bowl, top-ten volleyball matches and gymnastics meets - along with about 1,500 youth campers each summer. Beyond athletics, the flexible floor and Levy-catered event spaces make it a campus workhorse for galas, general sessions and large ceremonies, with more than 5,000 parking spaces within a five-minute walk. Set on Fred Taylor Drive beside the Schottenstein Center and the rest of the athletics district north of the Olentangy River, the Covelli Center - named for the Covelli family whose gift anchored the project - completed Ohio State's decades-long consolidation of its Olympic sports into purpose-built homes.