University Center is a 7,500-seat multi-purpose arena in Hammond, Louisiana, United States, on the campus Southeastern Louisiana University. Often called "the UC" within the University, it was built in 1982 at a cost of $16.3 million.
It is home to Southeastern Louisiana University's Lions and Lady Lions basketball teams and hosts many other functions including Southeastern’s commencement, a variety of concerts and community events, circuses, and rodeos.
From 2001 through 2008, the arena hosted the girls basketball state championships tournament of the Louisiana High School Athletic Association; after a 1-year hiatus at a location on another campus, the tournament returned to Southeastern and to its University Center in 2010. The tournament is well received and supported in Hammond and Tangipahoa Parish, where girls basketball has been popular for many decades. Baylor University coach Kim Mulkey starred at Hammond High School before a standout career at Louisiana Tech and as a member of the U.S. national team that won the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics.
The arena floor measures 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2); the arena seats up to 8,961 for concerts. Access to the University is via multilane LA 3234 (University Avenue) from I-55.
Famous quotes containing the words university and/or center:
“If not us, who? If not now, when?”
—Slogan by Czech university students in Prague, November 1989. quoted in Observer (London, Nov. 26, 1989)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)