New track does not disappoint

JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers GRADING ON THE CURVE—A lone runner makes use of Oak Park High School’s new all-weather track on a recent afternoon. Since it’s completion late last month, the facility has earned rave reviews from athletes, coaches, community members and those who made the $500,000 project possible. It’s unlikely that 10 years down the line the students who step foot on Oak Park High’s recently completed all-weather track will be aware of just what went into making the quarter-mile stretch of red rubber a reality.

For them it will already be a fixture of life. Any talk of “dirt surfaces” or “week-long rain outs” will be dismissed as nostalgic discussion about a time and place far, far away.

But for now, with the final touches on the long-awaited project applied less than one month ago, the footprints of the many community members who made the dream possible are as distinctive as the track’s freshly painted bright yellow numbers.

“I can’t look at (the track) without thinking about all the time and energy that went into it,” said Belinda Tucker, chairperson of the OPHS Athletic Booster Club Track Improvement Committee. “It’s just amazing to me that a group of people could come together and make something like this happen. They say, ‘it takes a village.’ Well, in this case, it certainly did.”

More than a decade after OPHS head track coach Kevin Smith first kicked around the idea, and four years since the creation of the track improvement committee, a group of those involved in bringing the new surface to Oak Park gathered late last month to take a victory lap.

Smith, who’s kept a close eye on the project since it began, was among those in attendance.

“We are so happy with how it turned out, right across the board,” Smith said. “It looks great, it feels great. . . .Once they got the lines painted on I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is what a track’s supposed to look like.’”

Over the past few years the track improvement committee raised much of the money to cover the final construction costs—which were in upwards of $500,000.

“What makes this track so special is that not only is it a part of the community, but it’s the community that raised the money to have it built,” Tucker said. “It’s theirs.”

It wasn’t long after the new track began to take shape that the Oak Park community showed just how hungry it was for a year-round location on which to rack up miles.

Runners began popping up on the track day and night, even before the project was completed.

“People were running around piles, jumping over mounds—I thought it was a little dangerous,” Smith said. “I’m seeing people (on the track) now at all hours. There are some days where I leave at 7 p.m. and they’re still out there.”

Tucker, who said she’s already made use of the facility on several different occasions, agreed.

“It just shows that there was this pent up demand—people were hopping over barriers to get out there,” Tucker said. “And that’s just what we wanted to see. One of things we emphasized early on with this project was that it had to be a resource for the entire community, and that’s what it is.”

One person with a solid grasp of the meaning and spirit behind the new track is Eagle cross country team co-captain Brian Hunt, a senior. Born and raised in Oak Park, Hunt said he’s humbled to be part of the first senior class to call the new surface home.

“It’s something really special for us. We know that there were a lot of classes that came before us that didn’t have the ability to run on this new track, and I think we as seniors, as well as all the other athletes, see it as an honor,” Hunt said. “It comes with a sense of responsibility, not only to all the people that made this possible, but to all the great track teams before us that gave the program the reputation it has today.”

The girls’ cross country team has won five consecutive Tri-Valley League titles and the boys’ have won six out of the last seven.

With the official start of the cross country season Aug. 22, Hunt said he and his teammates have already begun drawing inspiration from the stadium’s new look.

“The first time I ran around it I remember feeling that this marked the start of something new,” Hunt said. “I started out as a freshman running on the dirt track and now I’m ending my high school career with a whole new track and a chance to start up a whole new legacy.”

The only casualties of the project it seems were the temporary visitor stands put up every year during the football season.

Though original plans called for the stands to be included, time constraints on a grant from the state did not allow the necessary ground work to be done to make room for the bleachers, which in the past have sat directly on the dirt track—a placement that is no longer allowable.

“We had to weigh the costs and benefits, and the cost of delaying the project would be losing the $100,000 from the state,” Tucker said. “It’s unfortunate, and at some point we hope there is enough money to put them back.”

Though in most instances the home bleachers will be sufficient to hold fans from both teams, principal Lynn McCormack did acknowledge that something would have to be done for the Eagles’ annual battle against rival Oaks Christian. The contests in years past have left standing-room only in the stadium, even with the use of the visitors’ bleachers.

“We’re going to look at renting bleachers . . . because we’d hate to have to reschedule the game at another location,” McCormack said.

Either way, the loss of the stands seems only minor considering all the positives that are expected to result from the new track for many years to come.

“I’ve been on a lot of tracks . . . and this one feels absolutely wonderful,” said Tucker, a professor at UCLA who’s had two sons go through the Oak Park track program. “It’s going to bring new events to the community. Events people used to have to drive to will be in their back yards. I already know there’s a lot of local community groups that would like to relocate there.

“This track is everything we thought it was going to be and more,” she added.