The Our Saviour School and Routt Catholic High School track teams soon will have a track of their own.
The best part? A project that normally would come with a price tag of $500,000 will cost the two schools almost nothing.
It’s all because of a coach with a big dream, an incredible team of generous donors, a little luck — and a whole lot of wind.
It began last year, when Kristie Maro, who then was an assistant track coach at Our Saviour, took the team to the Junior Irish football field to practice. The field where the MacMurray College football team used to play has an old cinder track around it.
“We had the kids practicing on sidewalks and on the grass,” said Maro, who also is a fitness instructor and personal trainer at Fitness World. “I was using sidewalk chalk to try to mark so that they could figure out markings. Toward the middle of practice, I said, let’s take them down to the Junior Irish field. There’s a dirt track around it — let’s run on the dirt track to at least get a feeling of being on a track. Because all these kids were new.”
The cinder track, long buried under a layer of dirt and weeds, left a lot to be desired. That was when Maro made up her mind.
“I said, ‘I’m going to get us a track,’” she said. “‘I’m going to find a way to get us a track.’”
Now the head coach at Our Saviour, Maro went to work, talking to everyone she could think of as she tried to learn what it would take to build a new track.
One of the biggest expenses is the base beneath the track. That’s gravel. Lots and lots of gravel. Unless the school could find gravel at an affordable price, the project would never get out of the starting blocks. And it didn’t, for many months.
Then out of the blue, in July, someone — she can’t remember who — asked Maro if she had thought about contacting the company building the wind farm east of Jacksonville. All the gravel roads they installed so they could put up all those windmills would have to be removed from the farmers’ fields at some point.
Maro contacted her stepbrother, who lives near the wind farm, and asked him to track down a name and a phone number. By July 4, she had her contact — Duke Trenkamp of White Construction.
Maro waited a couple of weeks before calling Trenkamp; by that point, even she thought it was a long shot. But finally, she figured, the worst he could say was no.
He said yes.
“He liked that I’m a farm girl, he likes that I’m from the community, he likes that I’m a new track coach,” Maro said. “And their company just loves kids. They want to help kids.”
Trenkamp talked to his boss, then met Maro out at the track the next day. White Construction at that moment was looking to get rid of a lot of gravel. It was a classic case of being in the right place at the right time.
From that point, with help and guidance from Jamie Cosgriff, and support from Our Saviour and Routt, Maro started calling around to find other people who would be willing to help.
Everybody said yes.
First, Trevor and Buck Lahey removed the dirt and cinders from the track, excavating down 6 inches all the way around the football field. All free.
White Construction trucks started rolling in Saturday morning. The company loaded the gravel into trucks, drove them in and dumped them one after another. When White Construction is finished, it will amount to 200 semitrailer loads in all — a total of 2,300 tons of rock. White Construction also is rolling, compacting and grading the stone.
All at no cost. Zero.
“It’s an amazing company,” Maro said. “I want to give them huge props. Because without White Construction doing the wind farm, we could not have done even remotely a part of this.
“Duke’s a good dude,” she said.
Others have joined in. Mike English and Buddy Summers have done a lot of hauling associated with the project, free of charge. Mark Moelers, owner of KE Vas Co., and David Bruner of United Contractors Midwest are donating 300 tons of milling — recycled chunks of asphalt from other projects — which later will be used to create an asphalt-like surface on top of the gravel. The baton eventually will be handed off to an apprenticeship program that will lay the asphalt later this fall.
Several other companies and individuals are helping behind the scenes.
“It’s just overwhelming to me,” Maro said. “I’m overwhelmed with all of this, that we’ve been able to do this, and it’s actually going to happen.
“All these people pulling together, and all I had to do was say, ‘What can you do to help me?’”
Once the asphalt is down and the track is marked, teams will be able to practice on it. The last step will be to finish the track with a rubberized surface. That will cost around $80,000. Maro already has started thinking about fundraisers to get the project across the finish line.
Our Saviour’s track team had 38 student-athletes last year, and Maro is hoping to build on that. Having a track of their own should give both the Our Saviour and Routt track teams a big boost.
Maro’s daughter, who will be a seventh-grader on the Our Saviour track team, got to see the work happening first-hand. “She was like, ‘Mom, this is so cool,’” Maro said.
The coach agreed.
“It’s just amazing that we’ve been able to do this,” she said.
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Running down a dream: Coach’s vision, help from friends means new track for Our Saviour, Routt - Jacksonville Journal-Courier
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