Moving Dirt for Track and Field

 Moving Dirt for Track and Field

By Bobby Neal Winters

Part of my daily routine this summer was to walk from my office in Yates Hall on the PSU campus out past the Crossland Technology Center and back.  This became increasingly difficult over the course of the summer because of all the construction.  

They are fixing the steam tunnels on campus. It’s one of those jobs that will be completely unnoticed by most when they are done, but it needs to be done. By way of contrast, between the Bicknell Family Performing Arts Center and the Crossland Technology Center, they are building a facility for track.

This has been fun to watch.

First they were in with a few dozers; then they put a big fence up around it to keep the “curious” from hurting themselves and suing everybody for their own "curiosity." Then they got busy moving dirt around.

And they did move some dirt, let me tell you, and in a surprising way.  Before the construction, when I looked at this from the north and from the south the field the track is going to occupy appeared to be level.  It turns out they had to move quite a bit before everything was level.

Then they started laying out the track, and there seems to be quite a bit to that as well.

As an Okie, I thought you would just put a couple of barrels on the field a hundred yards apart and let the runners beat the grass down to dirt as they practiced. 

You learn something new every day.

This is going to be an amazing facility when they finish.

I say this will all the authority of someone who has been to fewer than ten university athletic events in the last 36 years.

I want you to know that because I want you to read the rest of this column with the knowledge that I am not a big sports fan and that what I say is not coming from my heart, but from my head.

This track is an important thing.

Pittsburg State has, by all accounts, a great track and field program. Our current coach is said to be quite good, but I don’t know his name. But I’ve soaked up by osmosis over about three decades that Russ Jewett did an amazing job in building the program over the course of time.  (I can remember Russ’s name because he’d been a math major back in the day. We take care of our own.)

We’ve hosted important trackmeets over the years.  They bring people into town who stay at the motels and eat at the restaurants, etc. That’s good for the community at large and good for town-gown relations.

But there is more to it than that.

According to current estimates, next year the number of high school graduates in Kansas and in Missouri begins to decline.  That means the university will be trying to recruit students from a smaller pool.  That is a problem. 

This new track facility will be something that helps Pittsburg State stand apart from the rest.  Those high school students who are looking at PSU as a possibility for their choice in higher education who have an interest in track will find this facility very attractive.

I will probably never go to see a single track meet, unless one happens to be going on while I take my walk, but I am glad that this facility is being built.

I would like to say that this is all part of a plan by the university “brain trust,” but I don’t know that.  I am out of that loop, and the statement assumes the existence of a “brain trust.”  Maybe it is just the work of the Holy Spirit.

That would be okay too.

But dirt is being moved. A track and field facility is being constructed. It’s all looking good.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.