The 122,000-square-foot Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse is the new home to the WKU Forensics and Esports programs, and it will provide practice and training space for the Big Red Marching Band and Hilltopper Athletics. WKU celebrated the grand opening of the Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse with a building dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony on March 24, 2026.
The Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse includes an 87,000-square-foot indoor training facility for use by the Big Red Marching Band, WKU Athletics, Intramurals and the greater WKU community.
The facility includes a 21,000-square-foot clubhouse for the WKU Baseball program, equipped with new locker rooms, weight room, team room, coaches' offices and hitting facility with four batting cages and a flexible multi-use space.
The Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse will serve as the permanent home for the WKU Forensics program and provide the program with modern classroom, practice, office and competition space to allow it to continue its run of excellence as the most dominant collegiate speech and debate organization in the country.
The Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse will house the WKU Esports program and equips the team with a state-of-the-art competition space, practice pods and offices.
The new facility will also become the base for the Big Red Marching Band, with dedicated storage and support space for the band, as well as a venue for year-round, all-weather practice.
The Board of Regents approved the project in June 2022, and renderings for the Hilltopper Fieldhouse, as well as the new Football press box, were revealed during the WKU Board of Regents committee meetings in October 2023. A groundbreaking ceremony for the Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse was held in November 2023, and a beam raising ceremony for the new building took place in April 2025.
At a special-called WKU Board of Regents meeting on September 25, 2025, the philanthropic naming of the new state-of-the-art Fieldhouse was approved as the Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse. Cornerstone Partners for the Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse include Romeo and Rosemary Crennel and Dennis and Leslie Koon.
The Tim and Sarah Ford Fieldhouse was designed by K. Norman Berry Associates, Brown + Kubican Structural Engineers and Kerr Greulich Engineers, Incorporated, and construction is being done by Reeves Young and the WKU Planning, Design and Construction Team.
