Members of Northwestern’s jujutsu club said the practice space the team has used for more than 20 years fits the image of the founder perfectly.

“It’s rugged with no advanced machinery and it doesn’t have the nice rubber floors of SPAC,” said Konstantin Dubrovsky, the club’s president. “It’s definitely an old brick building that sort of signifies traditional ways.”

But at the end of Spring Quarter, the Paracombatives Jujutsu Club will have to give up the two upstairs rooms at Patten Gym to make space for a larger women’s locker room. The club, which has about 45 regular members, has used the space since its founding in 1977.

“As with anything, change evokes emotions,” said Dubrovsky, a Weinberg junior. “We’ve been there for over 20 years and it’s sort of our home, so people aren’t exactly jumping up and down about it. But as with any change, we have to sort of work with it and deal with what we’re dealt.”

Members said the rooms hold a sentimental significance for the club because the founder — an NU Law School graduate who died from lung cancer two years ago — held the first practice there.

“Since (he started it), probably thousands of people have been trained and can honestly walk the streets safer after just two weeks in the club,” said club secretary Jessica Edmonds, a Weinberg sophomore. “That’s part of the reason it has such a sentimental value to us.”

The club, whose members need space for a beginner and an advanced group three times a week, will have to pack up its mats and move practices to Blomquist Recreation Center next year.

But Dubrovsky said the new space, which will be closed off by curtains, could keep some of the new members from overcoming the typical shyness most experience when starting the sport. One of the first lessons taught is how to “kiai” — a loud, energetic shout that helps people exhale quickly.

“You’re very self-conscious at first, especially when you go into an advanced class for the first time and all of them are screaming like banshees,” Dubrovsky said. “So it’s difficult to do something as loud and attention-getting in an open space.”

Dubrovsky also said outside noises or stray basketballs in the gym could distract the participants’ concentration.

“We don’t just stand in front of a mirror kicking and then go home,” he said. “We do a lot of throwing maneuvers that require careful, careful attention, so we want to keep our focus and keep distractions to a minimum, because they can be dangerous.”

Aimee Parrish, manager of club sports, said the heavy curtains at Blomquist should prevent any distractions.

“We don’t have a choice, so we have to do the best we can,” Parrish said. “We try to do whatever we have to do to make everyone happy. It’s actually going to benefit everybody in the long run because they’re going to get a bigger area. It’s going to be no big deal — nobody got displaced.”

But some members said the bigger space could let protective mats slide around, also making it dangerous for performing kicks and throws.

Dan Bulfin, director of recreational sports, said the club could have chosen to stay in one of the rooms at Patten, which would have limited the number of spaces in the club.

Dubrovsky, who joined the club after watching a demonstration his freshman year, said he hopes more students will want to join the team when it’s closer to South Campus next year.

“It wasn’t like any other martial arts demo I had seen — with people throwing each other, everything seemed so surreal and absolutely impossible to do. But I started it and, like most people, fell in love with it.”