Bob Carpenter Center - Facilities - University of Delaware Athletics

Bob Carpenter Center

The Bob Carpenter Center served as host of the 2007 and 2008 CAA Women's Basketball Championships. In March, 2013 the BCC hosted an NCAA Tournament event for the first time in school history, as the Blue Hen women defeated West Virginia and North Carolina in front of a pair of raucous sellout crowds to advance to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen.The arena section of the building is named in honor of Frank E. Acierno. Acierno, a local businessman and developer, donated $1 million to the Bob Carpenter Center, the largest gift from a single donor. The BCC was formally dedicated in a ceremony on Nov. 10, 1992.
Delaware basketball teams moved to their new home after competing at 3,000-seat Delaware Field House since 1967. The Bob Carpenter Center is the center of an expansive collegiate athletic complex, the David M. Nelson Athletic Complex named in memory of the former University of Delaware athletic director, dean, and head football coach. The Bob Carpenter Center, named in honor of longtime University board of trustee member, athletic benefactor, and former Philadelphia Phillies owner R.R.M. "Bob" Carpenter Jr. who died in 1990, serves as home for the University's football and basketball programs as well as a site for a wide variety of other events such as convocations, concerts, and banquets. Special features of the facility are a 120-person football locker room, men's and women's basketball locker rooms, administrative offices, the Chuck Hall Memorial Weight Room, and athletic training rooms. Directly accessible to the locker room areas are three classroom meeting areas and a 120-seat lecture hall used for team meetings, classes, and press conferences. The Bob Carpenter Center also includes a comfortable glass-walled reception lounge area called the Bob Carpenter Club, with views into Delaware Stadium and to the Acierno Arena; and a scoreboard with a color video message center. The Bob Carpenter Center addition was completed in the spring of 2012. The 45,000-square-foot addition includes two new full-sized practice gymnasiums that are used by UD athletics teams, club sports, and intermurals, meeting room, film rooms, locker rooms, team lounges, offices for the men's basketball, women's basketball, and volleyball coaching staffs as well as for athletics development and external relations, and an area that houses the UD Athletics Hall of Fame. The facility was designed by the architectural/engineering firm of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum Inc. of Kansas City, Mo., one of the top firms in the country. Also involved with the project were local firms Tevebaugh and Associates of Wilmington, and Landmark Engineering Inc. and Healy Management Services Inc., both of New Castle.