Behind the Ridgway Secondary School, students are finishing a PE class while the sun fills the afternoon with a pleasant heat.
The earth is dry and baked. There’s a set of bleachers, an old scoreboard, and an expanse of patchy grass framed by a view of the San Juan Mountains rising to the south.
It’s a field of sorts, but to call it a proper soccer pitch is a stretch, and the school’s athletic teams haven’t used it since 2019.
Ridgway Athletic Director Shawnn Row says that since he took the position, the school has only played one game on the field before realizing it was no longer a playable surface.
"Since then, we’ve had to ship all of our games and practices over to the Ridgway Athletic Park. And that’s a very crowded space because everyone is trying to use it," he said.
While using the town fields has been a temporary fix, the facility is a 10-minute drive away and has a packed schedule, as it's shared with community leagues.
In 2021, voters passed a bond measure that included funding to improve the neglected athletic fields. At the same time, a group of parents, including Peter Hessler and Leslie Chang, began envisioning a different solution. Their kids run track, and Hessler is the coach. But the team doesn’t have a proper track to train on.
In the spring of 2023, Chang said the parents went to the school, and asked if it would be possible to put a track around the soccer field.
"And the administration said ‘actually we’re looking at different plans for what to do with our soccer that hasn’t been functional for the last five years: should we just do a quick fix or should we do something more substantive?’ So we all sat down and talked about it. And this is what came out of it: a plan for a new synthetic turf soccer field and an eight-lane track around it," said Chang.
The idea was ambitious, but it stuck. Hessler’s team isn't the only track and field program in the region practicing without a proper facility. Hessler says there are no facilities between Delta and Mancos.
“It’s sort of a strange situation where you’ve got a large area here which has no facility. So in the surrounding five counties, which is an area as big as Connecticut, there's no publicly accessible track,” he said.
“Some of that is geography. In a town like Ouray or a town like Telluride, even if you have the money and the will there’s nowhere to put it in these mountain valleys. So Ridgway is one of these places where we do have the space, so it sort of made sense to put it here.”
This absence of a track has brought regional enthusiasm to the project.
“It’s not just a Ridgway asset, it’s a Ridgway-Ouray-Silverton-Telluride- Norwood-West End asset, because these are all schools with track teams that don’t have a track," said Chang.
“We went around and talked to athletic directors and superintendents in a lot of these places, and they’ve said, ‘We’d love to have this facility.’”
As word spread, enthusiasm has moved beyond school programs and into the area’s rich running community. While the San Juans may be synonymous with rugged trails and mountain ultras, a track offers a different sort of opportunity.
Sarah Lavender Smith lives in Telluride and has been a runner of these mountains for decades.
“People might be thinking ‘Why do we need a track? We have this great bike path. We have miles of amazing trails,' And that’s all true, but there’s something so special about a track," she said.
"Doing a track workout when you have a flat, measured surface to challenge yourself with faster intervals, that is so beneficial. And the other thing about a track, it's a very low barrier to entry. Anyone can go to a track and try walking or running.”
Chang adds that a track could also serve elderly folks, community summer leagues, and local events.
“When you don't have the facility you don't really know what you’re missing. But once it's here, all sorts of people have ideas about how to use it. And this field and track and everything will be open to the community year round," said Chang.
Such an asset, however, comes at a cost. Estimates for an eight-lane track with a turf soccer field in the center, jumping pits, and other amenities total just over $3 million. Ridgway Superintendent Susan Lacy points to the bond measure passed a few years ago.
“Originally a full track had never been part of that bond, but definitely track practice facilities and improvements to the field had been. So the school district has pledged $750,000 from that bond to the project.”
Private donations have raised another $750,000, bringing the project halfway to its target. The Telluride Foundation has come on as a project supporter, and potential grant money could help close the gap.
However, the full funding picture—and the facility's fate—remain unclear. What is certain is the need for such a facility for track and field athletes at Ridgway Secondary School.
Jonah Hepp competes in hurdles at meets in Grand Junction and Delta. But for practice, he uses a hallway at the school, setting up hurdles along a row of lockers.
“Numbers twenty-five and sixty-eight. Those are the lockers we have to set them up by,” said Hepp.
"Doing any sort of track thing without an actual track is difficult. It’s just so inaccurate, and it only fits two or three hurdles.”
The dedication of the students, community members in the region, and the parents who initially proposed the project has brought the vision a long way.
“You often have people with good ideas,” says Lacy, “but it's rare to have volunteers with good ideas who are willing to do the work. And they’ve been an amazing team, working really hard.”
Those volunteers say the project is at a critical stage, as the remaining funds must be secured before the end of the year for the project to move forward in its entirety.
Visit cimarronathleticfield.com to learn more.
Copyright 2024 KOTO.
This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including KSJD