Need for refurbished facilities, student athletes speak up
- Abby Wheeler '28
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Recruited out of high school to compete as a college tennis player with no place to change, no place to get ready, no place to congregate with your team.
An all-conference track and field athlete without the ability to compete in front of home fans and family or even practice safely on the track at their school.
Lacrosse players at risk of torn ligaments, broken ankles, and piled turf beads while having shared locker rooms.
These are not just stories. This is the reality for a number of athletes on the Oglethorpe University athletic teams. A common theme arises among all the Stormy Petrel athletes: the facilities need to be updated.
“No athlete wants to sit on the sideline and miss a year of their career that they will never get back,” women’s lacrosse player Jill Ursem said.
The Downing Howell Tennis Courts are the home courts for the Oglethorpe Women and Men’s Tennis teams. Built in 1920 and then dedicated and refurbished in 2010, the courts have seen thousands of tennis matches. The six-court tennis complex sits as a midpoint between two of the facilities in the athletic section of Oglethorpe’s campus.
Its years of wear and tear are now visible and affecting the athletes who play on them. Senior Taylor Glover has played all three seasons leading up to this year and has won 14 games overall in her four seasons and counting.
“If the court hasn't been resurfaced in a while, the cracks can affect how the ball bounces, and even the wind screens; they break after every time we have a storm,” Glover explained.
Glover also described that there are commuter athletes on the tennis team, and for them, the need for a locker room is pressing. Around 60% of Oglethorpe’s students are commuters, and the school community recently established a commuter lounge on the bottom floor of Hearst Hall. However, the space is quite a walk away from the athletic facilities. The lack of a locker room for the tennis team spans beyond the commuters and reaches all the players.
“Having a locker room definitely could help with the togetherness of the team, meeting before games, and having a private space where you can come together and discuss private matters,” Glover said.
The lacrosse and soccer teams also share the same sentiment about the locker rooms. Ursem has played three seasons at Oglethorpe and has seen the effect of no true locker room firsthand.
In the fall, the soccer teams at Oglethorpe hold priority of the locker room. In the spring, it switches, and the lacrosse players have priority of the space. However, the lacrosse team must move all their equipment and personal items out of the locker room every time opponents for basketball games need to use it. This includes their bags, clothes, food, and practice equipment. In its place, athletes use a shed on the turf field that houses ball buckets and field equipment to store personal items.
The primary cause of concern for lacrosse and soccer players is the turf. Originally built in 1960, the field turned into an all-purpose multisport turf in 2013 and was renovated and expanded in 2020. Since then, the turf has gone through many methods of maintenance, none of which seemed to help the athletes health.
“Because it isn’t raked frequently, the turf beads pile up together and so there are dead spots where there are no turf beads to support athletes running there and so when someone pivots or dodges, there is no support for their knees, ankles, etc,” Ursem said.
Research suggests that the turf should be raked every 40 hours of activity, equating to once or twice a week, and raked before every game to ensure the best possible functionality. Currently, it is raked once a month.
After the expansion of the field, the track and cross-country team lost lanes one and two which changed the measurements of the track, despite it being resurfaced in 2013. This creates issues in length of workouts, how to measure distance on runs, and where to practice field events. Senior runner Hannah Rhodes is an all-conference winner and program record breaker. She has seen the effects of the damaged facility in her career.
“Our track isn’t even a real track. It’s really unfortunate because there are cracks and holes and it is unfit to be a track other teams can come and compete at since we don’t have lanes one and two. The track is longer than 400 meters which means all of our workouts have to be modified and it just makes it difficult because all the measurements are different,” Rhodes said.
Oglethorpe administration has already been notified and alerted of the need for refurbishment. The Student Athletic Advisory Committee, commonly known as SAAC, has been working diligently as a liaison between the student athlete concerns and the faculty who can advise them. 2025-26 committee president and member of the baseball team, Nathan Murray, developed an idea to bring these ideas to the forefront of the administration.
He mandated all SAAC representatives to communicate with their teams and compile a list of facility concerns in a petition that could help the betterment of future athletes. Some of the concerns mentioned were the need for AC in Dorough Fieldhouse, resurfacing of the tennis courts and track, and updated maintenance of the turf.
Murray hopes that the petition is a “high alert notice for people who are high in administration or maybe the Board of Trustees and Alumni where they make a lot of generous donations that they could help grow Oglethorpe.” The petition has already been sent to Athletic Director, Todd Brooks, Assistant A.D. Cindy Vaios, and University President, Dr. Kathryn McClymond.
But most of all, the student athletes must become proactive in campaigning to have better facilities. Proper care now ensures proper function for future athletes and can help maintain the quality before funds can be reserved to fully refurbish.
“Most of it comes from the student athletes, we need to participate in order to keep the turf in the best shape we know how to,” Murray said.
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