By Lindsey Boyd ( @lindsboyd3):
San Jose State University’s track and field team has become accustomed to practicing with broken equipment on a facility that gets swept daily because of trash and glass residue from tailgates.
“We just don’t get really enough recognition for what we’ve been doing with these facilities,” said Kelsey Johnson-Upshaw, a Division I track and field athlete at SJSU.
Johnson-Upshaw is referring to Bud Winter Field, where she practices daily. But, her equipment is broken. Tires used in training are stolen by homeless people. And, glass and trash left from SJSU football tailgates must be swept out of the way every day before she practices.
How do you recognize a team who sent four players, including a conference champion, to the 2017 NCAA Western Preliminaries without exposing the conditions it’s had to work through?
If you’re San Jose State athletics, you don’t.
“The record speaks, but with track we don’t get a lot of exposure so … a lot of people on campus don’t even know there’s a track team,” Johnson-Upshaw said.
Since it’s existence in 2014, women’s track and field has hid in the shadows of teams like SJSU football –– the team that generates the most revenue for athletics.
“We have good people who care about SJSU’s student-athletes. They care about the football program,” said Paul Lanning, Vice President of University Advancement, in a tweet on Nov. 14.
Without a successful and/or well–funded football team, it’s difficult for any athletics department to make money. According to USA Today, student fees toward SJSU athletics totaled $8,322,552, which means 5.3 percent of student tuition goes to athletics. (Tuition fees totaled about $156 million according to the 2016-2017 SJSU Annual Budget Report.)
To earn revenue for track and field, the team thinks the athletic department relies on football to fund its program without promoting track and field itself.
“It’s just after she [Tuite] gets them [football] squared away that she will focus on everyone else,” said Destiny Longmire, 2016 longjump conference champion.
Football takes one for the team, including getting paid to play University of Texas and Utah State this season, but players say the money isn’t spread equally.
“Football makes the money, but at the same time you have other sports that have nothing,” Johnson-Upshaw said.
The university states that it is still short funds for a $5 million track and field facility. Nobody wants to take the blame for the track and field conditions. So who is responsible?
“Yeah I mean yeah it does fall on her [Tuite],” Longmire said.
As athletic director, Marie Tuite has several responsibilities such as managing the athletics budget and supporting all of the athletes. According to the NCAA, another part of the job is to review the facilities that the university has to offer.
“But you should do a little investigating about the institution’s philosophy towards facilities,” states the NCAA website.
Ultimately, the athletic director and coach only have so much money and facilities to work with. It’s the school’s philosophy of how to promote athletics that changes the cash flow and upgrades the facilities. Not much has advanced in SJSU athletics, as is evident of a having a sports information director and spokesperson since July, 1980.
Because of the lack of facilities at SJSU, many teams must look elsewhere to practice.
“Men’s water polo, women’s water polo, swimming and diving, men’s and women’s golf, softball and baseball all practice off campus,” Tuite said in an email. “However, the track team has CLEARLY communicated with me that they want to stay at their current practice facility.”
The team wants to train at the Bud Winter Field location like the SJSU South Campus facilities campaign states, but they want a better facility.
“We definitely want to stay at our current facility,” said director of track and field Jeff Petersmeyer. “It’s not perfect, but it’s ours.”
Plans to build a new track and field facility were announced in August 2016. Almost a year-and-a- half later, there are still no permits filed to build a track and field facility at Bud Winter Field.
The last time SJSU tried to file a permit to build a parking lot at the field was in 2002, but that permit was cancelled.
“We don’t know what’s going on,” said track and field athlete Brittany Brown.
For Charlie Faas, CFO of SJSU administration & finance, it’s “premature” to talk about the details of the one and a half year partnership that the Student Union has with SJSU Athletics to fund a new facility.
The only thing the athletes know for sure is that the day they committed to SJSU track and field, they were promised a new facility.
“False hopes,” Brown said. “Well, I still like coming here, but I came here to get a new facility and I’m not getting one. It’s like I could have picked a different school if that was the case.”
