Track cites facilities for reasoning behind no home meets
In 2016, the Central Michigan track and field teams have no home meets for the indoor or outdoor seasons. Most notably is the removal of the indoor Jack Skoog Meet from the schedule.
Head Coach Mark Guthrie said the reason is CMU cannot entice other schools to come run on the Jack Skoog Indoor Track.
“Nobody wants to come here and run,” said Head Coach Mark Guthrie. “Our track is so slow, we are so far north. Nobody wants to come and run on our track.”
The Jack Skoog Indoor Track is a six lane, 200-meter track, which opened in 1999 with the completion of the Indoor Athletic Complex (IAC) on campus. Most indoor tracks today are 300 meters in length, which gives the track longer and smoother corners as opposed to the sharper corners seen on 200 meter tracks.
With the sharper corners, most athletes will post slower times than they would have on a 300-meter track.
“In today’s track and field, when there are either banked tracks or 300-meter tracks, that becomes the preference because that’s where you can run fast, which the athletes want to do,” Guthrie said. “On those tight turns, you can’t get out and run.”
This equates to the need for CMU track and field athletes to travel every week to their competitions, including six consecutive weekends at the beginning of this semester. The student-athletes miss classes on Friday and are resigned to doing homework anytime they can during the weekend — whether that be on the bus or in a hotel room late at night after a meet.
Some student-athletes said the hassle is still preferable to competing here.
“I don’t like running on our track quite frankly,” said senior distance runner Nate Ghena. “It’s kind of slow. It’s good for practicing, but when we have meets here we never run very fast.”
Even though the teams never get to experience a home crowd, most of the runner’s parents do actively follow the team when traveling.
“My parents follow me wherever I run,” said junior distance runner Kelly Schubert. They’ve gone out to Pennsylvania to see me run before.”
Guthrie said parents attend meets that are hours away from Mount Pleasant.
“Our parents do a good job following us whether it be to Eastern (Michigan) or Notre Dame.” Guthrie said.
Skoog was a track and cross country star at CMU, which earned him a spot to compete in the Olympic Qualifiers. He and his wife, Dottie, made contributions to the expansion of Kelly/Shorts Stadium and the addition of the indoor track to the IAC which now bears his name. He passed away on Aug. 30, 2014.
