NEW ORLEANS – A $13 million monitor and subject stadium for the College of New Orleans is among the many state-funded capital tasks accepted final month by the Louisiana Legislature and Governor John Bel Edwards.
The approval represents a big stride towards Vice President of Athletics and Recreation Tim Duncan’s strategic targets of strengthening the New Orleans connection and creating a championship tradition upon his arrival in 2019.
“Though we nonetheless have some work to do to carry Privateer Monitor to life, the brand new facility will present our groups with an exceptional house base to coach and compete,” mentioned Tim Duncan, vice chairman for athletics and recreation.
“As #NOLAsTeam, we can be proud to host occasions together with our neighbors at Ben Franklin Excessive College, the brand new Hynes-UNO Constitution College and others to proceed to positively affect the Gentilly group and past.”
The brand new facility will function a nine-lane monitor, regulation sized soccer subject, a fieldhouse, grandstands and a press field. It can occupy the house on campus on the nook of Leon C. Simon Blvd. and Elysian Fields Ave., subsequent to the Human Efficiency Middle.
The venue will give New Orleans monitor and subject and cross-country student-athletes a spot to coach year-round, whereas offering alternatives to host meets, Southland and NCAA championships. As well as, the stadium can be used to doubtlessly host Louisiana Excessive College Athletic Affiliation (LHSAA) and metro New Orleans highschool and New Orleans Recreation Growth Fee meets.
“It’s laborious to overstate how a lot of a constructive impression this facility may have on not simply our program, however all the New Orleans Monitor and Area group. Among the finest monitor and subject athletes on the planet name New Orleans house. This may lastly permit them a spot to showcase their abilities near house.?This facility will give us a first-class house for our student-athletes, whereas additionally providing one other platform for our College to service its group,” mentioned College of New Orleans Interim Monitor and Area Head Coach Ben Hibbert .
This new facility will present an enormous raise to the New Orleans monitor & subject program from not solely a coaching and competitors perspective, but in addition in recruiting permitting all of our working packages to proceed their exceptional climb. Some highlights embody:
2022 Girls’s Southland Cross Nation Champions
2022 Girls’s Cross-Nation Coach of the Yr
2023 Girls’s Southland Outside Third Place Crew end (highest end in program historical past)
“This can be an absolute sport changer! To see what our program has achieved over the previous few years with out these amenities, it offers me immense confidence that UNO is about to make the following huge soar,”?mentioned senior distance runner Kolyn Saltzman .
It isn’t simply New Orleans Athletics that can profit from the brand new facility. Residents of the native New Orleans group may even have entry to the monitor.
As a precedence 5 capital outlay mission with no first-year funding for design and planning included within the 2023-24 state funds, it will likely be as much as state lawmakers in future years to dedicate funding to the mission to ensure that it to be constructed.
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