Monday Morning Finish Line

February 28, 2022

By Michael Newman [email protected]

I had forgotten how hectic the end of February can be. I did not go through the hecticness of this weekend last year. I looked at the schedule last Monday to make a determination on which way on would be traveling on Saturday.

There were so many good choices, so many good meets that would be happening on that day. I started to watch the entries start to fill up in meets that I wanted to go to. By Wednesday morning, I had my answer.

I sent an email to Lakes High School Coach Travis Sheppard letting him know that I would be coming to his meet, the D117 Clash at the Coliseum. He was ecstatic that I would be there. He was more than accommodating to get me information.

There had been a lot of things out on social media about the D117 Fieldhouse or as they like to call it “The Coliseum”. I started to dig through any information that I could find out about it other than the information that Sheppard had sent me.

The fieldhouse, which District 117 Schools Antioch and Lakes Community will use was opened before the school year began last August. It opened earlier than expected. The construction of the facility also came in under budget.

The school district did their homework. They only had one shot for the right design for the right building.

“Lakes Community did a tour of our place. They went to each of the facilities that the architectural firm designed,” Batavia Boys Track Coach Dennis Piron said before the start of last Saturday’s meet.

“They asked us numerous questions,” added Piron. “The big one that I liked was if I could change one thing about my facility, what would it be?”

The district members made the tours to the schools and asked questions, got suggestions. Walking into this gem of a track facility, they got it right.

There is spectator seating along the straightaway similar to what Batavia and Huntley has. There is also a viewing area on the second floor of the building looking at the fieldhouse from the south and down on the track.

The track is a fast one as we saw from some of the performances from Saturday. Eight lanes for the sprint/hurdles straightaway. Six lanes all around this 200-meter track. A high jump area at the far end of the track. The shot put area is by the start finish. A Pole Vault runway to the outside of the back straightaway. Also, there is a runway for the horizontal jumps. If there was one flaw to the design of this place, it is that there are only one jumping pit. The Triple Jump was still going on after the running events had concluded. Lakes will figure that out.

A huge scoreboard is along the back straightaway wall. It is remarkably similar to the scoreboards that you see at North Central College and Olivet Nazarene University. Coaches were looking around in aw of the place shaking their heads in disbelief before the meet started. The talk on social media had under exaggerated how nice of a place this field house is.

There have only been three meets completed in the Coliseum. The word has traveled fast around the state about the facility. Edwardsville traveled from the St. Louis Metro area just to compete at this meet. I am sure we will see more stories on how this will become one of the destination facilities for high school track and field in Illinois.

This could be one of the top track and field facilities connected to a high school in the state. Other facilities have opened in the past couple of years in Chicago at the Track Facility at Gately Park, at Rockton Hononegah High School, at Moline, and at Burlington Central. There is another facility at Stevenson High School that has just opened up.

It is not the wow factor that will get people to travel north to near the Illinois/Wisconsin border. It is the way that their meets are conducted.

The one thought that went through my mind on the one hour trip to the meet was just that. It can be the most beautiful track in the world, but how would the meet run. Would there be delays? Would this meet get behind the publicized schedule? How would this meet turn out?

The one thing that I came away with is the meet ran almost flawlessly. The running events finished close to 20 minutes ahead of schedule. Refreshing. There was a timing malfunction in the 60-Meter-Hurdles where one of the sections had to be re-run. The meet was already ahead of the schedule that you did not notice. They had registered IHSA officials running every event. I saw IHSA Official John Betteridge when I entered the track, and I knew we would finish early. John is one of those good officials that this state has treasured.

Sheppard said that there is already a waiting list for the meet in 2023. He has some plans, dreams that he shared that I will keep quiet for the time being. Iron sharpens iron and we could see some eye-rubbing performances from the coming years.

I did not want to write this piece as a wow story about the building. You can have the best facility around. There are places that have been around awhile that were great, but the reputation has scared it. A pig will be a pig even if you put lipstick on it.

A facility can be great. But if you do not know how to run a meet, there goes the ball game, and you have a ghost town like Olympic Stadium in Montreal.

When I was running in the late 70’s, there were only three indoor track facilities in the state that had tracks sized 220y / 200m: Sterling, Proviso West, and the University of Chicago. There were all these smaller than 200m tracks that we would have to run on back then. More demand than supply to get on a big track.

We have come to the point where the supply is greater than the demand. It is the places that get the great reputations because they are doing the little things to make the experiences of the parents/fans (and media) a great one.

Not being able to get heat sheets in a timely fashion drives me crazy. Not getting a reply from the school is a strike. When you have to search to get meet information, that is not a good thing.

There are indoor facilities that I love going to. Outdoor tracks, well, it is outdoors and here again, it comes down to how the meet is run. The weather can be crappy, but I will always like the view northward towards Lake Ellyn at Glenbard West.

A few of the places I like to visit during the indoor season (in no particular order):

Wheaton-Warrenville South – It is only a 177.8 meter a lap track but Girls Coach Rob Harvey perhaps one of the top small meets in the state. His website and timing site make it easy to find information about his meet. He runs a quick meet because he is so organized (I think, maybe it is the people around him). Hospitality makes you feel welcome.

Batavia – Same thing as WWS. Dennis Piron is the Boys Coach and a former North Central College alum like Harvey. (NNC Alums stick together like family). The organization of their meets is great. Their distance madness meet is long, but so well run. Great track.

York – 200-meter track that opened in 2004. I went to school there. We ran on a 133 yd track in the basement under the gym. Fun. This track is one of the top tracks in the state and it is because they run their meets so quickly as well as having competitive meets. Fans may not like this place because the stands are on the opposite side of the finish line. For a media member like me, it makes it easier for me to shoot video. Plus, Betteridge usually starts their meets. Ultra-organized.

North Central College – There are a number of great college track & field facilities in the state. NCC’s Res-Rec Center is one of the best. Hospitality is great and not because I am an alum. Their Girls HS meet runs smoothly. Any of their high school meets that they host (like Mustang Relays) are first class allowing the host school to host with their help. 200-meter fast track. The warmup track above the facility is a great place to watch a meet.

The one common denominator to the four schools along with Lakes that I mentioned is that they know how to run a first class meet. There are so many great facilities in the state. Someday I may author a book on those places. Harvey said in a recent conversation that he wants the fans and athletes that competed in a WWS Meet to leave saying to themselves this was one of the best meets I have ever been at. More coaches should aspire to that thought. You don’t want to leave a track meet scratching your head.

The D117 fieldhouse is going to earn that reputation of a place that athletes want to compete at. Not because of the fresh paint and the newness of it all, but the simple things of making the athlete’s experience memorable.

Those places that have people that can’t conduct this simple plan, new paint or not, you will have a hard time finding people to fill the seats or get runners into the blocks or on the starting line.