Jack Krider was hired by Colorado State University-Pueblo to be the new Director of the Student Recreation Center where it will be Krider’s job to oversee the opening of the student recreation center and manage the new facility. Krider and his staff will also take on the tough challenge of getting the pool, the racquetball courts and the new climbing wall back open for students and staff.

While doing all this Krider and Co. will work on improving the club and intramural sports programs at the University.

Krider, however, makes it clear that he’s not doing it on his own.

“All those challenges will be done under a professional staff,” Krider said. “It’s definitely not a one man show.”

The new director said he is very excited about his new position, and getting to oversee such a big project again.

This isn’t Krider’s first big job of this nature. He was hired on at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley during a big building project and also was a part of a committee that designed the recreation center at Fort Lewis College in Durango.

All together Krider brings 13 years of campus recreation experience to CSU-Pueblo.

“I got to see the whole building project at Fort Lewis,” Krider said. “Now I’m here, and the challenge of putting together and overseeing the department is very exciting for me.”

Krider said he is most excited about the new recreation center.

“I don’t think this campus realizes the impact this recreation center is going to have on the students,” Krider said. “It will become a social gathering place, and I’m really excited about that.”

The massive, 50,000-square-foot student-funded recreation center is scheduled to open in late August.

Krider said he hopes that the new building will build camaraderie between the students of CSU-Pueblo and the staff and faculty. By sharing the facility he hopes it will bring people together.

Calling himself a “think outside the box kind of a guy,” Krider has been working with Michal Hughes and hinted at the possibilty of big, exciting surprises for students to enjoy in the very near future.

Before Krider was involved in campus recreational work, he staked claim to some pretty interesting jobs.

“I was a train robber,” Krider calmly said. “I robbed trains professionally.” 

While Krider was in college, he was part of an act for Silver Dollar City, a theme park now known as Dollywood in East Tennessee. During the act he would rob a train that ran on a track about nine miles throughout the woods of Tennessee.

“It was a comedy act for a few years,” Krider said. “Some years it was more of an acrobatic kind of show. A few years I got shot off the back of horses at a full gallop.”

His claim to fame though, came when he graduated college. Krider was hired on as the marketing manager for Dolly Parton.