Behind the Ridgway Secondary School, students are finishing a PE class. 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 Juans 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 since he’s been in the position, “we’ve only played one game on the field before we realized it just wasn't a playable surface anymore. 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.”
While using the town fields has been a temporary fix, the facility is a ten minute drive away and it’s got a packed schedule, as it’s shared with community leagues.
Voters passed a bond measure in 2021 which included funding to make improvements to the languishing athletic fields. Meanwhile a group of parents at the school, including Peter Hessler and Leslie Chang, were having dreams of their own. Their kids run track, and Hessler is the coach. But the team doesn't have an actual track to run on.
In the spring of 2023, Chang recalls, “we went to the school, and asked: ‘would it be possible to think about putting 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?’”
Chang continues, “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.”
School teams have not played on their home fields since 2019, when the boys soccer team won the state championship. Irrigation and surface issues have made them un-usable, and team currently practice on fields across town.
The idea was ambitious, but it stuck. Hessler’s team is not the only school track and field program in the area practicing without a proper facility: from Delta to Mancos, Hessler says:
“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.”
“Some of that is geography,” he adds. “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,” Chang says. “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. 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,’” says Lavender. “And that’s all true, but there’s something so special about a track. 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.”
Adds Chang, a track could 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.”
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 all the rest come to just over 3 million dollars. Ridgway Superintendent Susan Lacy calls the bond measure which 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, but the full funding picture, and the facility’s fate, remain unclear.
What is clear, for track and field athletes at the Ridgway Secondary School — the necessity of such a facility. Jonah Hepp competes in hurdles at meets in Grand Junction and Delta. But when it comes to practicing, he uses a hallway at the school, setting hurdles up along a row of lockers.
“Numbers twenty-five and sixty-eight. Those are the lockers we have to set them up by.” Hepp continues: “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, the region’s community, 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.