Jake Hasan
Feb 25th, 2020

Illinois Athletic Director Josh Whitman is a wizard.  Not for the first time (and probably not for the last time either) he’s convinced another family to make a donation to Illinois Athletics. It started with football and their new facility helped by the donation from the Smith family.

Then the anonymous donation to update the facilities at Ubben for basketball.

Then a donation from the Demirjian family for track and field and soccer.

Then the Atkins family supported new baseball facilities.

And now the Atkins family, who donated $3 million to upgrade the softball facilities.

The new softball facility, which will be called the Rex and Alice A. Martin Softball Training Center, is going to be an addition onto the current facilities and add an estimated 13,000 square feet. It adds a full practice area: infield, batting cages and pitching cages. This will put Illinois up there with some of the top softball facilities in the nation. The project will commence later this year and will conclude in the Winter of 2021.

This is just the latest step in Josh Whitman’s plan to rebuild Illinois athletics. We all knew when he came in that football and basketball would be the two main projects for Whitman to work on. But he has also shown a lot of commitment to making other sports better too. All part of the plan to make Illinois more relevant across the board, and it appears he is succeeding. At the very least he is convincing donors to believe in his vision.

Can we get an announcement on that hockey project next?