Originally ran on June 21.

The current construction at O’Brien Stadium should solve a problem that has plagued the track for years, according to university officials.

Mark Bonstetter, senior associate athletic director, said for over ten years the surface of the rubber track would form large bubbles when temperatures rose in the spring.

He said the current $3.2 million project being done by Hellas Sports Construction should prevent these bubbles from forming in the future.

Bonstetter said the bubbles would usually be two to three feet in diameter and 20 to 40 of them could form every year.

“If you looked at the south curve of the track in the past few years you could see repair after repair,” Bonstetter said. “It was getting to be unsafe.”

Stephen Shrake, associate director of design and construction, said the bubbles are not normal weathering for a track’s surface.

He said before doing construction on the track workers from facilities planning and management performed soil-boring tests to see what was below the track’s surface.

Shrake said they found only clay soil beneath the rubber surface and not the rock drainage base that had supposedly been built in 1968.

He said plans for the track originally included a rock base but since it was built before any of the current facilities planning and management employees were at Eastern, they have no knowledge of why it was eliminated.

Bonstetter said he has seen problems resulting from the poor foundation for as long as he can remember.

“There has probably never been proper drainage under that track,” he said. “We hope we don’t have this problem again.”

Seth Schroeder can 

be reached at 581-2812 

or scschroeder2@eiu.edu