VALDOSTA, Ga. – On Thursday morning, Valdosta State unveiled the ninth athletic national championship tree in Championship Grove on the corner of Baytree and Sustella just outside the P.E. Complex for the 2024 NCAA Division II National Champion Blazer Men's Tennis Team.
 
VSU President Dr. Carvajal, along with men's tennis head coach John Hansen and members of the men's tennis team took part in the ceremony in addition to numerous faculty and staff members.  
 
The Blazers have won national championships in baseball (1979), men's tennis (2006, 2011, 2024), softball (2012) and football (2004, 2007, 2012, 2018). The tree for the latest men's tennis national championship is a red crape myrtle.  
 
The centerpiece of Championship Grove is a Championship Oak, a sprawling live oak representing VSU Athletics' tradition of excellence.  The VSU men's tennis team continued the excellence as it went 26-3, won its Gulf South Conference record 16^th league title and won a 4-3 thriller over No. 2 Flagler last May in Orlando, with the match coming down to the final court.  Championship Grove began in February, 2019, with a grouping of eight trees planted in honor of Blazer Nation's eight national championship winning teams at that time.  
 
In 2019, VSU achieved Tree Campus USA status as it is a national program created in 2008 by the Arbor Day Foundation to honor colleges and universities for effective campus forest management and to engage college and university community members in conservation goals. In 2019, there were 344 institutions of higher education across the United States with this recognition. Collectively they invested more than $48 million in campus forest management last year.
 
The Arbor Day Foundation is a million-member nonprofit conservation and education organization dedicated to inspiring people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees.

VSU's Department of Landscape and Grounds is committed to providing the campus community with the highest quality service in the areas of horticulture, landscape maintenance, landscape construction, irrigation, and trash compaction. Each grounds maintenance team member takes pride in his or her efforts to maintain the distinctive beauty of the campus and how that supports university-wide recruitment and retention efforts.