This month, we wrap up Blueprint South Dakota’s spotlight on the entries from the 2025 Design Awards competition. AIA South Dakota members again proved their creativity and problem-solving skills with beautifully functional work, on display in communities across South Dakota and beyond. Each installment in this series introduces readers to a different project, in the design team’s own words. As part of every entry form, AIA SD asked submitters to provide a “long description” that addressed the design intent and its progression. We invited submitters to go beyond the stats to show the value the project added for their client or community. In turn, they detailed the problems the project solved, told how their process made the most of hidden opportunities, and described the ways the design supports the client or community through form and function.
Dakota State University Athletics Event Center
The basics
- Firm: JLG Architects
- Client: Dakota State University
- Category: Large Project
- Location: Madison, S.D.
The story
In a competitive collegiate environment, Dakota State University needed to differentiate itself to retain and recruit students and athletes. DSU’s new facilities provide an athletic and architectural edge for year-round resilience, meeting the needs of student-athletes, administration, coaches, academics, and fans. It also offers flexible hospitality alongside football stadium upgrades, a relocated track, an esports arena, a new soccer field, indoor gathering space, and an Athletics Hall of Fame.
Connected to the Athletic Events Center, the Brian Kern Family Stadium consists of an 1,800-seat grandstand, concessions, a team store, a new full-size synthetic turf football field, and one of the nation’s most advanced esports spaces. As the region’s hub for esports, the space is tailored to promote various practice, training, and competition setups, helping players fine-tune gameplay strategies and overall team communication.
Adjacent to the Stadium is the Dan Beacom Track Complex—the first new DSU athletics facility since the Fieldhouse was finished in 1960. The Complex features a full-sized synthetic turf soccer field surrounded by a new eight-lane 400-meter polyurethane track in Trojan blue and new sites for shot put, discus, and javelin. New field lighting, grandstand seating, digital video displays, and press box amenities were provided for both outdoor complexes.
DSU’s Athletic Event Center supports a variety of collegiate environments, including new team locker rooms, central strength and conditioning, state-of-the-art sports medicine, office/meeting space, hospitality/VIP areas, and suites. Further supporting academics, the facility creates space for a biomechanics lab, the Institute on Human Movement & Aging, and various DSU classrooms.
DSU’s Master Plan has been the road map to reinforce the identity of Trojan Athletics through distinctive design and state-of-the-art facilities, making a long-term impact that will increase student enrollment, expand academic growth, balance distribution of majors, and increase revenue-generating opportunities for both DSU and the greater Madison area.
More projects in the series
Click to view a video of all 22 entries in the 2025 AIA South Dakota Design Awards.
