Marysville’s Haley Cook prepares to high jump during a meet from the 2018 season. The Monarch boys and girls track and field teams will not host any meets during the 2019 campaign due to the stadium project that will begin in the near future.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Tim Miller)
The upcoming Marysville High School stadium project will force a change for the school’s 2019 track and field programs.
Several construction companies were recently hired by the district’s board of education for a combined price tag of a little more than $8.7 million.
The project will include, among other facets, new bleachers and press box, putting in a new track and field facility and installing an artificial surface on the football field.
The work will mean that the Monarch boys and girls track and field programs will be displaced during the upcoming season.
“We are not going to have any home track and field meets in the spring,” said MHS athletic director Ryan Walker.
Not only will the Monarchs be on the road for the entire meet campaign, but the project will also alter practice sessions.
“We’ve been developing practice plans for the program,” said Walker. “We can use portions of our entire campus areas.
“For instance, the distance runners will practice throughout the area and on the Jim Simmons Trail, just like the cross-country teams do in the fall,” he said.
“We also have areas that our throwers can use for practice,” said head boys and girls coach Luke Sundermeier. “We can have our throwers practice their footwork in the parking lots and we have also purchased additional indoor shot puts to use in gym space.”
The team’s high jumpers can also use indoor space as well.
Marysville school officials have worked with Fairbanks and North Union to permit Monarch athletes to practice at those facilities for such events as sprinters, relay teams and long jumpers (who need a sand pit).
“On days in which our athletes go to either Fairbanks or North Union, we will hold practice a little later in the afternoon, after those schools are done with their practices,” said Walker. “There could, however, be a little bit of overlap.”
“Fairbanks and North Union have been very willing to share with us,” said Sundermeier. “We will just call those practices our ‘travel days.’”
The school will add one additional paid coaching position that will be split between two people. There are also two volunteer assistant coaches to go along with six paid coaches.
Sundermeier feels that will be enough coaches to cover practices that are either spread throughout the campus or for those that are held at Fairbanks or North Union.
The Monarchs would not have needed the upcoming travel days had the football-track facility at Bunsold Middle School been ready in time for the spring.
“Initially, the facility at Bunsold was going to be finished,” said Sundermeier.
“However, we’ve had the wettest year since the Civil War,” the high school history teacher laughed. “That just got in the way of progress.”
While the stadium project is going to make life a little different for Monarch track and field athletes this year, Sundermeier is putting a positive spin on the situation.
“Our message has been that we’re keeping our eyes on the overall prize of a new track and field facility (next to the football stadium) ” he said. “That’s going to be incredible.”