‘Our university does not respect us back’

With the demolition of the Shell, UW-Madison track athletes have no place to practice indoors this winter

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As a freshman on UW-Madison’s track team, pole vaulter Joscelyn Dieckman expected to practice hard for a team she’s long admired. What she didn’t expect: that her school would be unable to find a place for her to practice in the winter. 

“It's honestly upsetting, as a first-year member, to come in here, join a team of such a great legacy and of such great coaches and people, and feel like our university and our athletics program in particular does not respect us back,” Dieckman says, adding that the team’s coaches are frustrated and worried, too. “We're the winningest team in the Big 10.”

UW-Madison began demolishing the Shell, which housed a 200-meter track the team practiced on, in August 2024. The university’s current replacement plan is a three-lane, 305-meter, odd-shaped track — similar to what currently exists at the Nicholas and Bakke recreation centers — in the rafters above a new $285 million football practice facility. A standard indoor track length is 200 meters with six lanes. The proposed set-up would make training for events like hurdles impossible, says senior-year Badgers cross country and track athlete Maggie Munson.

“If you are a hurdler, you can't go in the middle lane, because then you're in the way of anyone else trying to use the track. You can’t go against the wall, because you’ll hit the wall. And would you feel safe hurdling next to a railing with a three-story drop?” Munson says. 

UW-Madison explored building another track facility that would have cost an estimated $35-$45 million, says Justin Doherty, a UW Athletics communication director. But given the new rules allowing universities to pay up to an expected $20.5 million annually in revenue sharing to athletes, Doherty says “we're in a time right now where we're trying to maintain all 23 sports that we have” while making financial adjustments. Doherty says the revenue sharing deal, alongside finding a suitable location for the facility, were reasons the school decided to build “track training elements” into the Shell replacement instead. That appears to contradict statements from a UW Athletics spokesperson in late October who told The Capital Times that the facility’s planning process “began long before the NCAA lawsuit.”

UW-Madison does not currently plan to build another indoor track facility, Doherty says. He was unwilling to say whether the school is open to revising the Shell replacement project, saying “the plan is to go forward with the facility as is.” 

Asked the question again, he says, “I can only answer it the way I just did.” 

Athletes say the proposed facility is insufficient and makes them question their program’s future — they are demanding that UW-Madison revise the plans and allow for a competitive indoor track. 

“There are smaller schools in our state who are both Division II and Division III that offer better facilities than ours,” distance runner Scarlett Alvarez says. According to information on school websites, 11 UW system schools have competition-compliant indoor tracks — UW-Green Bay and UW-Madison are the only UW schools without one. Alvarez adds that she feels the situation shows a lack of “equity, care and thoughtfulness.” 

Some athletes, too, warn that the Shell’s demolition poses a potential Title IX violation. Among the landmark law’s many mandates requiring sex equality in education is equality in “practice and competition facilities.”

“[After the Shell demolition], we see a decrease in opportunity and equal treatment for men and women athletes, and an expansion of opportunities for sports like football, which is for men athletes,” says Munson, who’s also the president of Voice In Sport UW-Madison, a registered student organization and chapter of women's sports advocacy organization Voice In Sport. Asked whether the UW-Madison worries the track practice facility could be a Title IX violation, Doherty says all student athletes who trained at the Shell or McClain Center — also under demolition — will have access to the new facility.

On Nov. 18, Munson began a petition to encourage UW-Madison to consider a different plan for a replacement to replace the Shell. Within two days, that petition was the third-fastest-growing in the United States, according to Christina Martin, a Change.org spokesperson. It now has more than 2,900 signatures. 

Dieckman says their coaches are working day in and day out to find a place to practice, but the current plan for winter is haphazard — Dieckman travels about a half-hour north of Madison to practice pole vaulting, while freshman distance runner Sara Mlodik says distance runners are running outside in the cold. Badgers Athletics has not given a clear indication of where athletes may practice in the future; three athletes — Munson, Dieckman and Mlodik — say the Alliant Energy Center is an option, but nothing has yet been determined.

“We're weighing a number of options around the area [for winter practice], and that's where it stands at the moment,” Doherty says. Doherty did not have an answer for how long athletes will be expected to travel, nor the names of any specific facilities they might travel to. The Shell replacement will not be able to accommodate pole vault and high jump athletes, meaning an alternate location will have to be found for them, he says, but all other athletes will be able to train in the new facility.

There’s universal frustration and support for revisions to the Camp Randall Replacement Project among the cross country and track teams, six Badgers women's track/cross-country athletes told Isthmus. Many members of the team attended a Nov. 22 event at Lucky’s 1313 to celebrate 50 years of the women’s track and field team and to advocate for a new indoor track. Alumni and parents of athletes filled the room — among them, legendary Badgers track coach Ed Nuttycombe.

“Our coaches and athletes have been scrambling, with little success, to find a place to practice indoors. Future plans are not considering any competitive indoor facility,” Nuttycombe said. “These student athletes representing the University of Wisconsin deserve better.”

In the crowd was Ellen Houston, who ran for UW-Madison’s cross country team from 1977-81. Houston, now a clinical exercise physiologist, remembers practicing on the Shell’s rubberized lanes in the winter and says having no indoor facility will hamper athletes’ training: “There's no way you can duplicate the foot speed that you need for indoor sprinting outdoors in the cold.”

Houston feels like the cross country and track programs are becoming a “casualty of football,” a sentiment shared by many at the event. Tara Saleh, whose daughter, Kyla, competes for the Badgers’ track and field team, says “they would never do this to any other team.”

“[It’s like] the football team having their practice facility torn down during the season and being told you're going to practice on a basketball court,” Saleh says.

Dieckman says their criticism is not aimed at the members of the football team. 

“I know a lot of them have taken our petition. I've seen their names on the list, and we just appreciate that support so much,” Dieckman says, adding that a number of Badgers athletic programs — softball, in particular — have been lending support to the efforts for a new track. “Nobody's blaming them.”

Munson requests that supporters of a new track get in touch with UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, Athletics Director Chris McIntosh, UW regents and state lawmakers. The cross country and track teams are “organized and fired up” to advocate for the new indoor facility, Munson says. She shows a TikTok made by Badgers athlete Julia Moore, where Moore puts on winter layers alongside the caption “[Get ready with me] for practice at a Power 5 school in the Midwest that tore down the indoor track with no temporary indoor facility.”

Gov. Tony Evers, one of the state officials whom Munson named in her petition, did not respond to a request for comment.