Student Spotlight

Gus Stark / LSU Athletics

Pierce Hull

LSU STUDENT • MAJOR: Sports Administration

Pierce Hull had been managing a basketball team since his freshman year of high school.

“I couldn’t see myself not doing it,” Hull said.

So, he took the initiative to continue working as a basketball manager at LSU.

The summer before his freshman year as a Tiger, Hull googled the LSU athletic department and sent some emails. He introduced himself and talked about his experience managing a team. He had some of the high school coaches he worked with send over letters of recommendation.

“I was kind of nervous,” Hull said. “Just because, I do want to do this.”

After a series of Zoom interviews and one in-person meeting, he got the job. Hull, a rising sophomore studying sports administration, knew working as a student manager for the LSU men’s basketball team would look great on his resume. It would also help him meet a lot of people within LSU, including some of the SEC’s biggest basketball stars, like Darius Days and Xavier Pinson.

“Getting used to being around, like, star athletes all day and kind of having to normalize it a little bit,” Hull said. “That was a little hard at the beginning.”

For a normal day of practice, Hull got to the gym an hour early to set up. As the team arrived and warmed up, Hull assisted wherever he was needed. He

held the blocking pad for players to practice rebounding and boxing out. He fed the team basketballs during drills. Practice offi cially ended after every player made 20 free throws, but Hull stayed afterward to work individually with some of the players. On an average day he’d leave the gym around 8 p.m., after cleaning and locking up the facility.

“That locker room probably has 200 pairs of shoes in it for like 15 people,” Hull said. “I’d say that’s probably the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

But now, Hull said, all those crazy details are just “stuff.”

“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “Being around it kind of helps you be more familiar with it and take out the ‘Oh, this is bigger than me’ type of thing.”

Hull worked as a manager at every home basketball game last season. He fi lmed the games from a box at the very top of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. He met people from the NBA, scouts from the Pelicans and Suns and commissioners of different basketball leagues. He also met some of his best friends.

“I loved the group of managers,” Hull said. “We were a super tight knit group. I still talk to all of them, like, every day.”

As an out-of-state student originally from Houston, Texas, Hull said fi nding a good core group of people is one of his biggest pieces of advice for incoming freshmen — that and staying on top of your schoolwork. Depending on the day, Hull found himself at the PMAC as early as 4 a.m. or as late as 2 a.m.

“It was hard to balance at some points,” Hull said. Hull’s view from the student manager’s box at the top of the PMAC.

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To get it all done, Hull completed his homework immediately after each class ended. Hull said the system worked for him, but if he had to do it all over again, he’d do a little more mental planning in advance. Other than that, there isn’t much he’d change.

“If there’s something that you see you’re interested in, like, worst thing that can happen is you don’t end up liking it,” Hull said. “Might as well go out and try to see how it is.” Hull said his time managing the men’s basketball team was a highlight of his year, and he feels his experience has prepared him for his future in sports admin.

“It makes the dream seem a little more attainable,” Hull said.

The student managers of LSU’s men’s basketball team gather on the Dale Brown Court in the PMAC after the Tigers beat Alabama 80-77 in overtime in the last home game of the 2021-2022 season.

12/31/22

Student Spotlight

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