The moment came with little fanfare. Four Sequim High prep athletes clad in purple and gold — Taryn Johnson Anastasia Updike, Macy Cogburn and Rileigh VanDyken — circled the rutted, broken track for one circuit each, finishing the 4×400 relay about 20 seconds faster than their counterparts from Port Angeles to end the Olympic League meet.

For the next three years, other than some sporadic practices and occasional use by various groups, the SHS track has been unused.

Last week, however, crews from Oregon-based Beynon Sports were putting the finishing touches on a new track surface, the culmination of a project that will allow Sequim’s high school and middle school track teams to once again host track meets and for its athletes to train with lessened chance of injury.

“We needed this track resurface and we needed it bad,” Sequim High track and field coach Brad Moore said. “I’m super stoked that its there. I’ve going by every few days to see how it’s coming along.”

Moore, who’s led the SHS track and field squads for the past 30 seasons, said the last time the track was resurfaced was 1996. (Manufacturers recommend replacement every 10 years, Moore wrote district officials two years ago.).

Since then, large ruts and breaks in the track — made up mostly of ground up, compacted tires — began to surface.

Sequim Gazette photo by Matthew Nash Ryan Cortes with Beynon Sports fine tunes material recently placed around the Sequim School District track on July 19.

“On the east side straightaway [in particular], the separation had gotten really obvious,” Moore said, recalling a conversation in 2021 with assistant B.J. Schade to shut down the possibility of hosting any more meets for the safety of Sequim and visiting athletes.

“I’ve patched a few [holes] over the years but …. I think we’ve got to be done,” Moore said.

Since 2021, coaches and athletes have pushed for the resurfacing, and Moore credits former superintendent Robert Clark for putting the project back on the district’s radar and particularly current superintendent Regan Nickels for making it more of a priority on the Capital Projects Levy schedule, using funds voters approved in 2021 for various districts projects.

“I think for a long time it was a can easily kicked down the road,” Moore said. “Regan was very determined to make it happen.”

The old track surface, which crews completed demolition of on July 15, is being replaced with the new surface that will cost the district $363,299, while a secondary project — removal and replacement of a pole vault runway that for years was situated close to a concrete wall — cost $39,074, according to Nickels and Mike Santos Director of Facilities, Operations and Security. (A project to replace lights at the stadium lights will cost about $85,000 in Capital Project Levy, district officials said.)

Photo courtesy of Sequim School District Staff from Beynon Sports move and replace the pole vault pit at the Sequim athletic stadium. The runway and pad was close to a concrete wall — a safety concern both for athletes using the vault area and for individuals jumping from the wall onto the vault pad.

Crews dug up a massive amount of track material, Santos noted at a school board meeting in mid-July, and the finishing touches — striping of the lanes, are set to occur this week, Nickels said.

“We will be having a ribbon cutting ceremony though the event details are under development,” she said in an email.

The track will be open for public use at some point she added, but that date has not been determined.

Adjustments

Moore said track coaches and their athletes made adjustments to the deteriorating track surface at the Sequim stadium.

Runners would spend limited time on the track, doing runs off campus at venues such as Robin Hill County Park.

“We’d do our best to keep them off the track [but] the grass field is not great there either, not terribly flat or level,” Moore said.

SHS coaches began laying down strips of padded material called rollout runways on the track’s straightaways to give sprinters at least some repetitions. The pads have drawbacks, however, he said.

“When you’re running 200 intervals, 300 hurdles, you have to run curves and those [pads] don’t turn really well.

“They’re not ideal, and eventually they start to break down. This year chunks ripped off.”

Sequim coaches also started sending some of their athletes to train on Port Angeles’ track. The complication with that situation, Moore noted, is that athletes from different schools using the same facility at the same tome would be counted as a competition, of which schools are limited during a season.

That meant sending Sequim athletes to the PA track after the Roughriders’ practices ended at 6 p.m. (One SHS quartet made the best of that schedule: Kaitlyn Bloomenrader, Eve Mavy, Riley Pyeatt and Hi’ilei Robinson raced to a national title at the Nike Outdoor Nationals in 2022 despite not being able to practice their event at their home stadium.)

Some SHS runners started developing shin splints so coaches would send them to the nearby Sequim YMCA facility to do running drills in the pool or use their stationary bikes.

Image courtesy of Nike (video) / Sequim’s Riley Pyeatt celebrates with her teammates, from left, Eve Mavy, Hi’ilei Robinson and Kaitlyn Bloomenrader after winning the women’s 4x400 emerging athlete championship at the Nike Nationals held in Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., in 2022. The quartet was unable to train on the Sequim High track because of its poor condition.

More than half of the freshmen Moore saw in the past couple of seasons developed shin splint issues. Many of those runners did train as middle schoolers on the same track but the high school season s at least twice as long, Moore said.

“It’s a much longer grin,” he said. “It was pretty tough on them.”

One student-athlete who was an injury casualty of the track, Moore noted, was Tyler Mooney, a 2022 SHS grad who came out of his senior season and posted strong, state competition-worthy times in the 400-meter race early in the season. But he developed foot injuries — and slower 400 times — as the season wore on.

“He most likely would have medaled at state except the surface we were on kept him from doing it,” Moore said. “had he been healthy the whole season he probably would have broken our school record [in the 400].”

A silver lining: Mooney kept up with track and now competes at Washburn University (Kansas) in sprints and middle distances.

Moore also suspects the poor track conditions have also led to lower turnout numbers.

Sequim Gazette file photo by Michael Dashiell / From left, Sequim’s Anastasia Updike and Mikiah Winter and Port Angeles’ Lauren Larson break from the starting line in the 1,600-meter race at an Olympic League track and field meet in Sequim on March 31, 2021. The meet wound up being the last the Wolves hosted for more than three years after the surface was deemed unsuitable for competition.

At the urging of parents, athletes and coaches, the school district in recent months formed a committee to look at athletic facility improvements, starting specifically with the track and the stadium.

Committee members looked at various scenarios that would improve the playing surface at the stadium that hosts boys and girls soccer games and football games for multiple age levels, as well as other improvements. For example, Sequim’s stadium does not meet league, district or state requirements (artificial turf, a covered stadium) to host postseason games.

But those improvement costs reach into the $2.4-$5 million, district officials noted in a June school board meeting.

“The money is not there … and there’s no prospect of it coming in,” Moore said.

“If this [resurfacing] is what we can do and we can still host meets. Is is it ideal? No. [But it’s] a good surface to train on. I can live that.”

Sequim Gazette photo by Matthew Nash Workers with Beynon Sports of Oregon flatten new material for the high jump area on July 19.