Year old indoor track makes high school meet debut in March

By Michael Newman

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Bourbonnais, Ill --- The Douglas E. Perry Student Life and Recreation Center, on the campus of Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, opened to the students on December 12, 2012. It has wowed the campus life on this small campus for the last year. One of the feature points of this center is the indoor track. There was only one indoor meet last year. Now in 2014, there will be more activity in this spacious facility as college meets will take place on this 200 meter oval.

There will also be one high school meet hosted by Thornwood High School that will take place at the beginning of March. By then, the secret will be out about this center an hour south of Chicago.

When I was running in high school in the late 1970’s, there were only a couple of tracks in the Chicagoland area that were 200 Meters. You had a choice of running at Proviso West High School or the Crown Center at the University of Chicago. If you were more adventurous, you could take a trip to the University of Illinois and take a tour on their oversized track or an hour south to Eastern Illinois University. You could also head west to the Westwood Center in Sterling. Otherwise, you were stuck running in unique indoor tracks where the largest size in most cases was 160 yards.

Times have changed.

It has been on the wish list of the coaches of Olivet Nazarene University to get an indoor track facility for the school and their program. Before this center was built, they spent their indoors training on a 160 Meter Track hanging above the school’s basketball court.

The Chicago Bears call this campus their home with their training camp at the end of July and the beginning of August. Contrary to belief, the Bears did not fund this facility. According to Olivet Head Track Coach Michael McDowell, the idea for the center came up 10 years ago. The funding for the Rec Center came through grants and bond raising. They broke ground at the beginning of 2011.

The center was designed by Buchar, Mitchell, Bajt Architects, Inc. They were the same firm that designed the Res/Rec Center at North Central College in Naperville that has wowed each athlete that has competed in it.

The Smith Center indoor track is state of the art. It is an eight lane 200 Meter Track with a Mondo Super X Surface. “The turns are wide radius turns. The largest you can legally have for an indoor track,” said Olivet Nazarene assistant coach Kyle Rago. What is unique about this facility is that there are 10 42” wide sprint lanes. The 8 lanes around the oval are 36” wide.

The coaches at the school had a big say in the facility of how it would be set up. There is a cement throwers ring at one end of the track. There is protective netting there that can be used for weight throw events. There is a wide area of room on the inside of the back stretch for the Pole Vault runway and pit. There are two jumps runways on the outside of the far turn by the sprint starting line. It is out of the way of the activity of the rest of the track so that there can be no distractions like spectators walking across.

There were a few things on the school’s wish list that could not be done. A 300 Meter track was considered. A jogging track above the main surface, similar to the design at North Central, was also looked at. Those ideas just could not be done because of the budget that they were working with.

There is permanent seating for 650 spectators though 350 more seats will be added in time for Olivet’s first home meet on January 24. On the wall by the finish line hangs a Daktronics scoreboard. It is the third largest by the company in the state only behind those of Soldier Field and Toyota Park.

The Rec Center also has a climbing wall in the center of the facility. It towers 57 feet high and is the largest wall of that kind on any United States educational campus. It just beats the one at Texas A&M by two feet. There is also a competition swimming pool that includes a hot tub along with a resistance pool that can help with the training of injured athletes.

How fast is this track? With only one meet being held last winter, it is hard to tell. However in that meet, over 50 athletes hit qualifying standards for the NCAA D3 Nationals and the NAIA nationals. The number of meets this year will determine how fast this facility is. My guess is that it will not disappoint.

There will be the one high school meet there this yea. The demand within the campus has been great for the facility. I can see in the next few years more and more schools wanting a chance to run on this track.

It will be worth the drive.

Take a video tour of the indoor track.