Matt and Jill McCluskey have donated $1 million to the University of Idaho track and field program in honor of their daughter Lauren, a former University of Utah track and field student-athlete who was murdered in 2018 by a man she briefly dated.
The money will be used to resurface the Kibbie Dome indoor track, which will be named in her honor.
Lauren McCluskey Track
The track will feature a Mondotrack Super X surface. Mondo produced the track surface for the last six Summer Olympic games and over 290 world records have been set on Mondo products.
The south side of the dome floor, inside of the track, where Vandal basketball played for decades, will now become the home of Idaho tennis. Four competition courts will take the spot of the former Cowan Spectrum.
The new surface will provide a permanent home for the Vandals tennis to train and compete and give unprecedented access for fans and spectators to watch duals. With 8,000 seats on the south side of the Kibbie Dome, it will immediately have one of the largest seating capacities of any collegiate tennis facility in the country.
The McCluskeys received settlement funds from the University of Utah and its insurers, who acknowledged that they should have done more to protect Lauren. The family has pledged to donate the entire settlement to support the missions of the Lauren McCluskey Foundation, which include improving campus safety, supporting amateur athletics and animal welfare. The donation to the University of Idaho is directly from the McCluskeys and not from the Lauren McCluskey Foundation.
