Saturday it was a parking lot. Every other day of the week it is home to club sports.
The Special Olympics Pool fields, across from the Vet School on Skip Bertman Drive, are home to the LSU soccer, rugby and ultimate frisbee club teams. But on select Saturdays during the fall, the field is home to thousands of tailgaters and their respective automobiles.
It has become a major issue for club sports’ leaders. The fields are often littered with empty beer cans, broken glass and refuse. After the rainstorm this past Saturday, the fields were mangled by exiting vehicles, leaving ruts and divets across the practice fields.
“It is a huge concern, especially after this past weekend with the rain,” said Associate Director of Recreational Sports Mike Giles. “[The fields] got tore up pretty bad. The good part is that the University recognizes the importance of this, and so we’re actually working with landscape services … to make any initial repairs or clean up that is needed to get the fields back into play.”
Another major concern for club sports is the lack of adequate field space during the week. Each major club is vying for time on the fields and it is often difficult to schedule a time period convenient for all members.
“There is limited field space for a growing number of teams,” women’s ultimate frisbee president Amber Abel said in an interview last week. “It’s very hard to have more than one team practice on one field, because teams need the whole field in order to run a smooth practice.”
A new, exclusive club sports facility being built on Gourrier Road – which was expected to be open this fall – will not be ready for activity until fall 2004.
The setback involved bids that came in over-budget, according to Giles.
“When that happened, we had to go back and reevaluate the program,” Giles said. “Because our timeline got extended for a year, we were able to make some positive improvements to the original bid. Even though we are not opening now, hopefully we’ll have a better product by next year.”
The $1.7 million complex is expected to relieve field space tension for club sports and will provide fields free of tailgaters, Giles said.
“The beauty of the new facility is there will be no parking on those fields,” Giles said. “Unfortunately, we are still another year away from providing that access. But is our intention and our responsibility to do everything in our means to make what fields we have safe and playable.”