Editor’s note: The Indiana Daily Student spoke to five current and former track and field athletes for this story. Two of the athletes who are currently still on the team have been granted anonymity.
When IU track and field athletes go to their designated locker rooms before and after team practices, they double-check their belongings in unlocked lockers. They are often greeted by cockroaches in bathroom stalls, a thick film of built-up residue in the shower and worn couches with years of stains on them.
A year earlier, the IU track and field team claimed two event titles, broke three school records and achieved 15 podium finishes across men's and women's events during the Big Ten Championships. During the Indiana Early Bird Meet in December, the Hoosiers won 11 events and achieved 42 personal bests.
Every day, the accomplished Big Ten student athletes make a conscious choice to overlook the dirty place they are sent to get clean.
Allie Latta, an IU junior and ex-runner, quit early in summer 2024 due to multiple running related injuries. She remembered the two couches in the back of the women’s locker room faded with years of sweat stains and spilled liquids.
The team now brings their own chairs to sit on.
Latta said her teammates would put down an extra shirt before sitting on the couches. Latta’s roommate, who is currently on the team, even brought in a bean bag chair from home to help give the athletes a clean place to sit before practice.
IU Senior Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications, Jeremy Gray, said the head coaches can get together and annually request where budget expenses go for their team. He said the track and field coaches' latest request was to update the video boards for the outdoor and indoor track facilities. The Associate Director of Finance, Cody Whiteman, said that it totaled $608,000.00.
“That was a major, major ask,” Gray said, “and so the question is, should he have spent that money on couches or on video boards?”
The IDS made multiple attempts to contact the IU track and field coaches. The IDS emailed the track Director of Operations Warren Bye once, Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Edward Beathea once and head coach Eric Heins twice. The IDS also called Bye’s staff directory number twice, and texted assistant coach Andrew Poore’s and Beathea’s personal numbers. The only response the IDS received was from Beathea, who declined an interview and referred the IDS to Gray.
Whiteman said Indiana Athletics has invested $2,253,225.50 into updating the track and field and cross country facilities in the past five years. This included resurfacing the indoor and outdoor tracks and turf, installing a new cross country track on the golf course, updating the Billy Hayes Track Press Box and setting up new video boards.
“It’s probably been about 15 years since we last renovated the locker rooms,” Gray said, when asked specifically about updates to the track and field locker rooms.
Indiana Athletics has made significant updates to other sports locker room facilities over the past five years. The women’s basketball team center in Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall underwent renovations in 2022, featuring a modernized locker room, team lounge and training areas. The IU Board of Trustees approved a $7 million project that was completed in 2020 to restore the men’s and women’s soccer team facilities.
At IU, Gray said that while there is a budget for all of the sports, the amount each sport gets can vary. Only three sports produce revenue at IU — the men’s and women’s basketball teams, and football — while the rest operate at a loss and have limited budgets.
While some athletes like Latta wonder why furniture updates in the locker room haven’t been done yet, Gray said updating simple things such as the couch can prove to be extraordinarily cost-prohibitive. Michele Bucklin, IU’s interior designer, was hesitant to give costs, since it can vary depending on size, material and amount, but Gray said a desk by itself can cost $2,000.
Bucklin said that the furniture that goes into IU student athlete facilities is standard, but can only be bought from IU Capital Planning and Facilities. This is because the furniture has to reach safety codes and health codes for student athletic and public spaces. Her main priority when choosing furniture is that it is as fiscally beneficial as possible, while also being durable and aesthetically pleasing.
However, for the track and field team, concerns go far beyond aging furniture.
In the middle of summer 2024, a pipe broke in the women’s locker room.
One of the athletes, who is still on the team but requested to be anonymous due to fear of being kicked off, said this was the third time the pipe had broken in the past three years. She said she put a 32 gallon Brute trash container under the leak, but not before standing water had taken up much of the left side of the locker room, seeping into the bathroom and right in front of the stalls.
Gray said this is not exclusive to track and field, and that pipes burst in other facilities, even football’s and basketball’s.
“The problem is, you’ve got a 60-year-old facility here,” he said. “Assembly Hall’s just old.”
Any repairs needed, such as the pipes, are done by IU Facilities. Gray said they’ll shut off the water immediately and try to get to it as soon as possible.
An athlete has three immediate ways to ask for repairs at IU. First, they can go to their coach, who will speak to the administration. The second option is to go directly to their sports administrator. The third way is to submit their complaint to “Real Response,” an online application program that anonymously collects complaints from athletes for administrators to review regularly.
“It’s kind of a troubleshooting hotline,” Gray said. “The turnaround time of it is pretty quick.”
A new trash can had been put under the leak because the first one was completely filled, and some of the athletes had to move lockers because their personal belongings were soaked by the water. The athlete said she reported the broken pipe to her coaches, but after three days, the pipe had still not been fixed.
“I mean, are we just not as important as any of the other sports?” Latta said.
Earlston Bean, the track and field sports administrator, said he has not received any complaints from the track and field athletes since he started his position as the second sports administrator for track and field a little over a year ago, now holding the primary position, which he started in February 2025.
While all five of the athletes interviewed said they have seen custodians who help with issues around the building, they have never seen them in the locker rooms.
Gray wrote in an email to the IDS on March 26 that the custodians clean the locker room daily. Anthony Smoot, an IU custodial supervisor, also said that his third shift crew cleans the track and field locker rooms on a nightly basis. They take out the trash, vacuum the floors, clean the restrooms and disinfect the showers.
However, the athletes suspected that instead of replacing the trash bags, staff were simply removing the paper towels and trash, leaving the same dirty bag in the bin. Latta said that for the two years she was on the team, the soap and toilet paper were always running out, and none of the athletes interviewed remember noticing the floors vacuumed or mopped.
“I would never walk on the locker room floor barefoot,” Latta said. “That’s just gross.”
Cockroaches are also common in the locker rooms. Athletes said they have become used to analyzing the toilet for insects before using the bathroom. Many times, they have found cockroaches lying on the seat or the handle — both dead and alive.
“We would normally see them when we were going to the bathrooms,” Latta said. “In the stalls you would see dead ones.”
Gray said cockroaches are common in any venue that hosts millions of fans a year, including Assembly Hall, no matter how new the facility is.
One of the athletes said she’s seen cockroaches on the locker room floor for an entire month before finally being swept away or vacuumed. Some of the athletes will throw them away themselves.
Latta recalled her friends on the team asking the coaches for cleaning supplies to clean the locker room, but they were ignored. One of the girls finally decided to bring her own supplies and spent a day scrubbing and vacuuming.
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Across the entire Big Ten conference, track and field facility conditions differ depending on each school. Illinois received a $7 million gift to develop Demirjian Park, completed in 2021. The park includes a renovated track and field complex, with updated locker rooms, meeting rooms, medicine and nutrition facilities, coaches' offices and more. In December 2024, Nebraska announced its Board of Regents approved a $10.5 million enhancement to its track and field facilities, which is set to be completed in October.
Other universities have not been as fortunate. Wisconsin demolished its Camp Randall Memorial Sports Center in October 2024 to make way for a new indoor football practice facility. The demolition left the track and field team with no place to practice for the indoor season. The team now travels 30 minutes away to a leased warehouse for training.
At IU, while the school budget might not yield enough to renovate the locker rooms, IU alumni have been known to donate to specific facilities. Shonda Stanton, IU softball head coach, said the team's softball clubhouse was renovated because of a generous donation from an IU alumnus.
“They were ecstatic,” she said. “I think you can imagine what it could do, it’s exciting.”
Stanton and Gray said locker rooms aren’t as important for other sports, including track and field. But for the softball team, Stanton said a clubhouse is everything.
Trelee Banks-Rose, a 22-year-old fourth-year runner on the men’s track team, has marked the second fastest time in IU history for the 200-meter finals with a time of 20.80 seconds. Trelee has spent a lot of time at IU’s track and field facilities.
“I think the men's locker room is quite great,” Banks-Rose said. “We all get along.”
Banks-Rose said some of his favorite memories from being on the track and field team were in the locker rooms. He remembered his first year running for the IU track and field team, the leaders of the team and upperclassmen invited him to play games in the locker room one night.
Banks-Rose said he had not noticed any oversight in the upkeep of the locker rooms and his coaches take good care of the team and do their best with what they have. Banks-Rose has asked for replacement gear for himself, or for utilities such as the air conditioning to be fixed in the past. He remembers never having to ask twice and things getting done within a couple of days.
Banks-Rose said he still doesn’t know the combination to his locker, but he doesn’t mind because he’s never asked for it. He said he had never seen a cockroach in the restrooms.
Clayton Guthrie, an IU sophomore and ex-runner, competed during his freshman year of college. He had to quit the track team because he acquired an injury while running and knew he was going to be cut. Guthrie remembered a different experience while on the team.
He said he was excited to be a part of a college track and field team when he first came to IU, but admits he was disappointed when he got a tour of the facilities.
“I just didn’t expect it out of a Big Ten school,” Guthrie said.
Guthrie said some of the worst days in the locker rooms were during the summer when the air conditioning would break. He described it as sounding like somebody had put a metal ball inside, which kept up a constant loud clanking noise.
“It would actually be a hundred degrees in there,” Guthrie said. “You couldn’t really stay in there.”
Guthrie said people who wanted to bring soap for showers, deodorant for after practice or even ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch would come back and find it all had melted into a mess at the bottom of their locker.
Guthrie remembered seeing a lot of broken lockers go unfixed as well. One of his teammates had to use a broken locker that wouldn’t lock for two months before someone fixed it for him.
The three female athletes added that for years, the women haven’t been given a code to the locked compartment in their cubbies. Some of them have been permanently swung open while others stay shut.
Only female track and field athletes, female cross country runners, custodians, coaches and other authorized personnel can enter the women's track and field locker room.
One athlete said most of the women leave their valuables, such as keys, purses and cell phones, in their cars or find other, more secure places for them. She knows jackets and Aquafor have been stolen, as well as her clothes strewn about on top of her locker, instead of in the bottom compartment of her cubby where she last put them.
“I was thinking, ‘Did someone seriously wear my stuff without asking?’” she said.
When asked about the lockers not being able to lock, Gray said he did not know anything about the issue and that he would look into it right away.
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Even with all of this, Gray said he wants to spend money for their next renovation on the bleachers.
“It’s important for them to have a facility that makes them competitive with the peers that we ask them to compete against,” Gray said. “It's also important to have safe and clean personal spaces for them to operate, and locker rooms fall into that.”
While that is the goal, budgets are what they are. Gray said one of the reasons why money isn’t available for the track and field locker rooms is due to the $20.5 million budget cut IU athletics implemented at the start of 2025 in preparation for revenue-sharing with students.
Gray said IU Athletics built new facilities for wrestling, volleyball, baseball and softball from 2010-2020. They have upgraded field hockey, branded swimming and diving and bought a new indoor track. Both sides of the football stadium were enclosed, Assembly Hall was renovated and a basketball practice facility was installed in Cook Hall. The staff got pay raises, teams received extra coaches and travel opportunities.
“That’s going to be kind of looked at as the fat and happy years,” Gray said. “So we’re going back to the way it was before, but it’s easier to never have lived in a mansion than to go from a mansion to a regular house.”
Even still, most of the athletes in the “24 Sports One Team” school feel the impacts of these cuts, while the top three revenue-producing sports are expanding. In November 2024, Indiana University President Pamela Whitten and Vice President and Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Scott Dolson were working out plans for a renovation to Memorial Stadium facilities to solidify IU’s football reputation.
It’s been almost a year since the pipe broke in the women’s track and field team locker room. There is still a hole in their ceiling and a trash can under it, just in case it starts to leak again.
CORRECTION: This story was updated to correctly identify the coach who referred the IDS to Jeremy Gray.
