Children swarmed about, drooling to cannonball into the purple, gold and gray foam pit.
Tiger-striped lavish carpet lined the floor of the elevator, emblazoned with a purple and gold fused LSU’s gymnastics team’s schedule on the entrance door.
Adult visitors and donors mingled around mimosa stands, fruit trays and gumbo pots as they admired what LSU coach D-D Breaux called “the world’s finest gymnastics facility.”
From the beginning of her initial interview for the gymnastics head coach job with then-Athletic Director Carl Maddox in 1977, Breaux embodied growth and didn’t accept anything less than excellence. In 1977-78 — Breaux’s opening season — the LSU gymnastics program evolved from a club sport to a varsity program.
She’s always envisioned change and growth, even into her 39th season as the leader-in-charge of the gymnastics program. Her dream came true on Saturday, she said.
She acknowledged the program’s evolution since her first year at LSU as she met with the media on the freshly-laid brick walkway, saluting donors who provided to the ribbon cutting of the Tigers brand-new, multi-million-dollar, 38,656-square-foot practice facility.
With gold, foot-long scissors in hand, Breaux opened her sixth-ranked team’s new training center alongside Louisiana’s recently-appointed Governor John Bel Edwards, his wife, Donna, LSU President Dr. F. King Alexander, Athletic Director Joe Alleva, Tiger Athletic Foundation President and CEO Rick Perry, Breaux’s elderly mother and a special few donors to the two-story, sleekly-beautiful facility.
For Edwards, Saturday’s ribbon cutting was his first as governor — a special moment for Breaux, she said.
“This is my first ribbon cutting,” Edwards said, followed with a joke. “But, I think I cut one at a Piggly Wiggly one time.”
In her company, the state of Louisiana showed its support for Breaux and the Tigers gymnastics program.
“To have the whole state of Louisiana behind LSU is the key,” Breaux said.
With hundreds of people in attendance, Breaux and company cut the ribbon and allowed fans to stroll the inside of their completed practice palace.
With a locker room fit for Hollywood stars, complete with personal vanities and lit-mirrors to perfect makeup for meets, the LSU gymnastics team will reap the benefits of its new three vault runways, a Texas-sized foam pit, four uneven bars sets, a giant purple floor mat and six balance beams at alternating heights.
Their new kingdom is the gymnasts’ playroom, healing place and a temple of recruiting majesty.
Behind the eyes-in-the-sky, video-monitored cameras with connecting televisions to critique routines, is a theatre-seated room beside a kitchen with bar seating. Its neighboring room features a transforming hot tub, cold tub spa beside multiple athletic training tables, stationary bicycles, training machines and yoga balls.
All of which is overlooked by a glass-enclosed meeting room, with a view toward the practice mats, for recruits to meet with associate head coach and recruiting coordinator Jay Clark, a ribbon-cutter of his own.
Sandwich in between the practice and recreation area is a choreography room to develop routines with former LSU two-time All-American, ribbon-cutter Ashley Clare-Kearney — who’s now a local Baton Rouge lawyer, volunteer coach and choreographer for the Tigers.
Clare-Kearney was a member of the many alongside LSU’s President and Athletic Director to announce the grand opening.
Alleva said funding for the facility was all through donations, and “during time of financial crisis in our state, not a single dollar came from state funding,” he said.
“This is the greatest gymnastics facility in the country,” Alleva said.
You can reach Christian Boutwell on Twitter @CBoutwell_TDR.
