Tuscaloosa Academy Breaks Ground on $7 Million Gym Funded by Donors

Families and administrators at a private school north of the Black Warrior River gathered in front of hundreds of students Thursday morning to break ground on a new $7 million athletic center.

Leaders at Tuscaloosa Academy, a private Pre-K through 12th-grade college prep school, said they’ve been planning a new gym there since the late 80s, and after decades of talk, the project will finally get underway this summer.

The Mayers Athletic Center at Tuscaloosa Academy is a $7 million project, and the school has been raising money for about a year and a half to finance the construction.

Head of School Beckie Share said more than $5.2 million has already been committed, and Tuscaloosa Academy is still working to cover the remaining costs.

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She said TA has six basketball teams alone and little space for students to play and practice, meaning some athletic functions start before dawn and others wrap up late into the night.

"Our school performs really well athletically," she said. "We've sent multiple sports to state championship-level competition over the last several years. We want our facilities to match the performance of our students."

"The Athletic Center will have a new football fieldhouse and a new weight room three times the size of the small one we have currently," she continued. "It will have a tournament-style gym, with visitor locker rooms, home locker rooms, a multipurpose space, and, of course, it will have concession stands. This will become our main gym. We will have all of our contests here, and we also want to host tournaments."

The building will bear the name Mayers, after local philanthropists Ric and Chloe Mayers. Ric Mayers is the owner and CEO of Midstates Petroleum Company, who gave Tuscaloosa Academy its first-ever million-dollar donation to kickstart funding for the project.

"A TA parent connected Ric and I, and he wanted to talk about the status of education here in our community. At that time, Rick's wife was pregnant and due very soon. We talked about what the future would look like in several years when his child would be able to come to TA. And we talked about his favorite sport, wrestling," Share said. "I told him that we couldn't quite start wrestling because we didn't have the space, but that we were actively doing something to prepare for that. We left our meeting, and about 30 minutes later, I received a phone call from Ric Mayers and he simply said, 'I want to be your million-dollar donor.'"

With that massive donation and contributions from every member of the TA staff and its board of directors, they're growing ever closer to the $7 million goal.

Share said dirt will start moving soon, and they expect construction to take about 12 months, so the new athletic center should be online for Tuscaloosa Academy for the 2027 - 2028 academic year.

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