The Rice Health and Physical Education Building houses Rice Auditorium, where the Wildcat volleyball and basketball teams play, and the Department of Health, Human Performance, and Sport, with classrooms for health, physical education, and sport management programs.
Rice Auditorium
Rice Auditorium serves as the home for the Wildcat men's and women's basketball teams as well as the volleyball squad. Recent upgrades to the arena include: new baskets, rebranded playing surface, and hallway graphics in 2019, new scoreboard, videoboard, music/PA system, and speakers in 2018, renovated restrooms in 2015, and updated graphics and a virtual Hall of Fame in 2013.
The gymnasium area seats approximately 2,500 for basketball games and volleyball matches, and the facility is also used for winter graduation ceremonies and spring graduation when unable to be held in the Willow Bowl. Named for John D. Rice, Wayne State College's president from 1951-56, Rice Auditorium was the site of the 1999 NCAA Division II North Central Regional Men's Basketball Championships, the 2006 Northern Sun Conference Red Baron Women's Basketball Classic, and the 2012 NCAA Division II Central Regional Women's Basketball Championships. Another special event hosted in Rice Auditorium was a spring volleyball match between Nebraska and Creighton in the spring of 2014 with proceeds from the event going to the Wayne Summer Sports Complex following destruction from the 2013 Wayne tornado.