By Evy York, Summer Editor • Jun 26, 2026

At Illinois, athletic facilities are places on campus that both further the development of student-athletes and tell stories of the traditions and history of the University. The artistic aspects of the facilities, as well as the names themselves, display this idea.

“We have history and tradition, but we also have innovation and forward-looking energy, and so trying to find ways to harness both of those things for the benefit of our program is fun,” said athletic director Josh Whitman. “It’s great to be able to kind of play both sides of that. For example, we’re in the process right now of doing some new graphics in the Smith Center. If you go over to Ubben, they have some new stuff up since the Final Four. And so you want to find ways to tell your story. We have great stories to tell … What’s cool about these facilities is it kind of gives you a canvas to do that.”

At his annual roundtable on Thursday, Whitman updated the media on upcoming projects to improve some of the athletic facilities at the University.

On Thursday, it was announced that Illinois Field, home of Illini baseball, will undergo a $5 million renovation. An anonymous donor funded the upgrades, which will include a complete renovation of the seating bowl with permanent seatbacks and new seating on the first and third baselines, plus expanded dugouts. 

“We hope, as we’re able to identify additional funding, that we can implement some additional stages to that project and continue to build on it,” Whitman said. “But the new seating bowl will be a big deal for our fans, and they should really benefit from that.” 

These upgrades are the program’s first since 2023, when the Atkins Baseball Training Center was unveiled. In 2015, a new video scoreboard was installed at Illinois Field, and the turf at the facility was redone in 2020. The newest renovation will be the program’s first in about 10 years. 

“I am extremely excited about the upgrades to Illinois Field,” said head coach Dan Hartleb. “The renovations will significantly improve the fan and player experiences while also enhancing home crowd comfort. We have been extremely blessed to have a donor step up to help us to continue to advance Illinois baseball.”

Moving forward, Illinois Field isn’t the only prestigious facility at the University that will change in the near future. Whitman noted that, with donor support, the north end of the Demirjian Indoor Golf Practice Facility is being improved and expanded for both the team and staff this fall with new staff offices, locker rooms and team spaces. 

As for football, the new videoboard project — announced in January as what will be the largest video display in college football — is scheduled to be finished in mid-July, according to Whitman. The video board will likely debut at Busey FamILLY Movie Night. The upgrades to Gies Memorial Stadium won’t end there, though. This upcoming season, there will be improvements to the Wi-Fi in the stadium, the sound system and lighting.

Looking towards the future, Whitman mentioned that options are being explored to build a combined practice facility for volleyball and wrestling. However, there are no plans to replace Huff Hall as the competition venue for either program. 

“We’ve done this with other sports where we’ve focused on practice facilities first,” Whitman said. “We’ve done it with football, we’ve done it with basketball, golf, baseball, softball, and, not surprisingly, success has followed. And so we’re gonna take a similar approach with those sports.”

Whitman and all the staff within athletics are constantly working to meet all the needs of each program at the University, so Illinois athletics’ overall success can continue to grow. Although there are constraints on allocation of resources, the University still values each program. 

“We recognize that we haven’t touched every facility that we want to,” Whitman said. “We haven’t hired every staff member that we’d like to. We’re not able to do everything that we want to do. But we work actively with every coaching staff to create a plan that aligns with the resources that we are able to provide. They help us identify obstacles and roadblocks for their success, and then it’s incumbent on us to try and develop ways to remove those obstacles.”

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