The first-of-its-kind collaboration between a health system, a professional sports team, and a public school district has opened in Frisco. The Baylor Scott & White Sports Therapy & Research Center at The Star aims to provide professional and amateur athletes with the treatment and knowledge needed to improve their game—and stay healthy.
Baylor Scott & White, the Dallas Cowboys, and Frisco Independent School District joined to open the medical and sports performance complex at the Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters within Frisco’s $5 billion mile. The nine-story, 300,000-square-foot facility expects to serve 50,000 visitors annually across individualized performance evaluations and sports medicine care.
“The aim of the Baylor Scott & White Sports Therapy and Research Center at The Star in Frisco is to advance wellness, prevent injury, treat patients using using a team-based approach while advancing innovation for the future,” Baylor Scott & White Health CEO Jim Hinton said at the center’s opening Wednesday.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones called creating the center a “no-brainer” for the team. Cowboys Executive Vice President Jerry Jones Jr. said the facility will bring top-tier healthcare to all types of athletes. “You don’t have to be a world-class athlete to be treated with world-class treatment,” Jones Jr. said.
The center specializes in injury prevention, performance, recovery, education and research services. The facility will include a sports performance center, medical imaging, sports surgery, outpatient rehabilitation, a concussion center, research, a Gatorade Sports Science Institute, and additional outpatient services.
Scott Sehnert, director of sports performance for the Dallas Cowboys, says the center will be an asset to the team. “We’ve already had one of our players over here doing some other testing. It is very individualized. You won’t see 53 players come here over the course of the season,” Sehnert says. “You’ll see individual guys with individual needs in individual situations that I can consult with to find that test that’ll help them. We can get the right information to them because just collecting information isn’t always that helpful; it’s what we do with that information.”
At the opening ceremony, Perkins+Will Design Director Ron Stelmarski, lead designer of the complex, stood on the green turf of the facility’s football field, pointing to the movable glass wall that converts it from an indoor to an outdoor field. Visibility makes the players themselves a feature of the complex, he said. “[The center] has a little bit of the flavor of the AT&T Stadium, but also it’s meant to be very kinetic,” Stelmarski says. “That’s why the wall literally moves, so that body in motion is really important.”
Student athletes in Frisco ISD can also utilize the center. According to Frisco Mayor Pro Tem Shona Huffman, 80 percent of Frisco residents move to the city for the schools. With the new Baylor Scott & White Sports Therapy & Research Center, she expects the trend to continue.
“This project is really meant to open the door, literally and virtually, to children—for them to be able to humanize and personalize the space for themselves,” Stelmarski says. “If you think of a healthcare facility, you think of something cold, maybe sterile, and it’s usually very intimidating. This is not meant to be intimidating at all. [The center] helps to truly bring it down to the children’s eyes, and then it can go and scale all the way up to the [Cowboys].”
