LSU beach volleyball officially opened their brand new venue right next to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Monday.
After the announcement of the new courts in February 2018, the team has eagerly awaited this day. The sand will finally be put to good use. LSU Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics, Joe Alleva, with the help of the Tiger Athletic Foundation, came up with the idea to turn LSU’s old tennis courts into the new beach volleyball facility.
“We’ve had beach volleyball five years,” Alleva said. “When we moved our tennis facility down the road a little bit [across from Alex Box Stadium], we thought about what to do with this facility. It turned out to be, probably, the best beach volleyball venue in the country.”
The old tennis courts were built in 1970 and were in desperate need of revitalization. This opened an opportunity for beach volleyball to finally have a home on campus for the first time. Despite not being on campus since their start, LSU beach volleyball has finished as a top-eight team the past two seasons.
The new facility is comprised of six competition courts with 24-inch deep sand, a state-of-the-art permeable subsurface drainage sand and an underground irrigation system to cool the sand in the Louisiana heat.
“We’re honored to be here,” head coach Russell Brock said. “This gives us an opportunity to really begin to compete, to really begin to, kind of, over achieve in this sport. Now we’re finally ready to really start going. The five years until this point has prepared us to be here, to really start to put in the work, to really become the program that LSU deserves.”
Since 2014, the Tigers have been playing their matches at Mango’s Beach Club in Baton Rouge. Over the past two season alone, the Tigers have gone 20-1 at Mango’s. They have also appeared in the AVCA Top-10 for 24 consecutive weeks, beginning in 2017. Now that they’re in the heart of campus the Tigers plan to continue giving it their all and then some.
“Our mindset moving forward is: we’re gonna earn it,” Brock said. “We’re gonna earn it every day when we’re out here training, every day when we’re competing, we’re gonna trying to earn the ability to have something this amazing. It’s beautiful. We pinch ourselves every day. We anticipate continuing to work hard to make it better and better as we go along.”
The facility also features LED lighting, a home locker room, a top-notch training room for medical attention and a team lounge for watching film or just hanging out. The total capacity is 450 fans. Two new scoreboards make it easy for fans to keep up the whole game. The team has also already started using the sound system during practice.
“It’s been a great project and it’s a great enhancement to the campus,” Alleva said. “I hope students come out, they’re right here. I hope they come out and watch. It should be a great venue.”
The Tigers will be able to open their new venue to fans on Feb. 16 for a Purple vs Gold scrimmage game. The Tigers will then host their first competition on March 15 for the LSU Beach Volleyball Stadium Duel.
“I think we’ll have even more fans now that we’re on campus,” senior Ashley Allmer said. “A lot of people don’t know where Mango’s is, or don’t wanna drive. It’s so convenient so I feel like our fan base will really pick up. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.”
