University’s Hertz Center. 68
were not the toughest task the department faced. Tulane was forced to make drastic budget cuts after Hurricane Katrina. The prestigious university cut nearly 50 percent of the staff and faculty, and athletics was stripped down from 16 to five teams. Tulane was down three runs in the bottom of the ninth, but luckily the NCAA and Conference USA made exceptions to various requirements, allowing the program to hit a triple to force extra innings. Slowly but surely, Tulane was able to recover, bringing teams back incrementally from 2009-2013 before proudly sporting a full lineup last year. Not surprisingly, Dickson deservingly won the “United States Sports Academy Distinguished Service Award” in 2006 for masterfully and courageously leading the department through unprecedented adversity following Hurricane Katrina. “For everyone who went through that, they lost their sports. I made a vow to rebuild it all. To me, it’s about fulfilling that promise. That was a big reason I stayed; I felt like I owed it to them.” Dickson calls the Tulane football team’s new home, Yulman Stadium, “the centerpiece of resurgence for Tulane athletics.” But upgrading the football team’s facilities did not kick off the program’s recovery, nor will it be the final whistle.
Every Tulane athlete deserves a locker.” Further, the men’s and women’s basketball teams and the women’s volleyball teams were provided with a newly enhanced arena, as Tulane restored the Devlin Fieldhouse. Built in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt was president, the arena is the seventholdest on-campus indoor basketball arena, so an upgrade was likely long overdue. Yulman Stadium was next on the list. With a capacity to hold 30,000 fans and with more than $75 million spent in construction cost, the football stadium is perhaps the most impressive physical entity on Tulane’s beautiful campus. Numerous skeptics simply cannot believe the university pulled it off. Nevertheless, attendance is expected to skyrocket as the Green Wave hosts six home games this season, the first four of which are all being televised on an ESPN affiliate network. Additionally, the department is building an “athletic village” off campus that will include new tennis and sand volleyball courts, as well as a new track stadium. The village may be the last page in the current facility upgrading playbook, but under Dickson’s watch, it likely won’t be the last (green) wave of improvement for Tulane athletics. What makes the program’s accomplishments >>
Inside New Orleans
photo: THOMAS B. GROWDEN
Inside Tulane
hottest part of the day. Unfortunately, however, scheduling sacrifices
The goal is to rebuild or improve all of the major athletic facilities for Tulane’s 16 teams, a game plan Dickson drew up in 2009. The first project entailed a $150 million campaign to renovate Greer Field at Turchin Stadium, the home of the Green Wave baseball team. Next came a 43,000-square-foot, stateof-the-art practice facility known as the Hertz Center. “It’s mainly used by the volleyball and basketball teams, but there are lockers, film study rooms, training rooms, workout facilities and study areas for every team in the Hertz Center. It was important to us to give each Tulane athlete a locker, even if the sport’s practice facilities were off campus as they are for a team like bowling.