Let’s backtrack to April of this year. Half of the student parking lot was shut down to make room for trucks carrying loads of supplies to renovate the track. Though inconvenienced, the student body was excited to have a brand new track, projected to be finished by the first few weeks of school and in the nick of time for the start of fall sports.
Fast forward to November, the track is finally nearing completion, but all of the fall sports that utilize the stadium have ended their seasons. Many students, especially athletes, are left questioning how and why installing the new track went so far over schedule and are frustrated by the delay.
Sports most impacted by the seemingly never ending construction in the stadium were football, soccer, cross country and cheer.
Varsity soccer player and senior Justin Griffith expressed his grievances.
“[The track not being done] ended up taking away multiple of our home games and, as seniors, that really hurt us,” Griffith said.
Though meets and practices don’t typically take place on the track, cross country often holds speed workouts there once or twice a week. Being under construction, alternative routes had to be found, often times on backroads. Senior and varsity runner Madison Rempalski felt the frustrations.
“It really hurts our training because doing speed workouts on harder surfaces puts a lot more impact on our legs,” Rempalski said.
For each home football game, the cheerleaders had to drag their cheer mats out to the incomplete track in order to do stunts because the top, soft layer of the track had not been laid down during the season.
“Cheer can’t stunt on the concrete. [The] mats got ruined from bringing them outside,” senior and varsity cheerleader Elizabeth Schuitema said.
Coaches also shared the annoyance. Robert Nowak, an assistant varsity football coach and offensive coordinator for sub-varsity football, explained that most of the difficulty for football came through scheduling the practices. While games were unaffected, the teams were often unable to practice on the turf.
“There had to be a lot of extra communication between [Athletic Director Patrick] Marsman, myself, [sub-varsity head coach Nicholas] Holt, and [head varsity] Coach [Ryan] Oshnock to figure out which days we had to practice where and having to shuffle a little bit more,” Nowak said. “[We had to] be a little bit more creative with where we could practice and when we could practice.”
The creativity came in the form of alternating practices from the turf to the band field or to the grass Rahn fields. While turf was preferred by players and coaches, they were frequently stuck on the grass fields.
“To be honest, our grass fields aren’t super well maintained,” Nowak said. “The middle school practice field, I wouldn’t call it unsafe, but it’s less comfortable to practice on.” He added, “And you have to walk a quarter of a mile to get over there [from the high school].”
After moving around a few soccer games and various practices, Patrick Marsman, the Athletic Director, said that the school began to refuse to budge on certain sporting events.
“[Rockford Construction] knew we weren’t going to move our Blackout football game or homecoming, we’re just not going to move those games,” Marsman said. “So, it came to a point where they started working around us, because we just weren’t willing to have our kids play all of their competitions away.” Marsman added, “The teams, the kids and the coaches, they handled it well.”
While students were frustrated by the track not being complete, many didn’t know what, exactly, caused all of the delay.
Rockford Construction oversaw the installation of the track, but smaller companies were subcontracted to do other tasks, such as AG Sports, which performed the track surfacing and painting, or Black and Gold Transport and Paving, which paved the cement under the surface of the track.
Clayton Martin, Rockford Construction’s senior project manager, explained that the weather, particularly the rain, was the biggest factor when it came to delaying the track.
“The track installation and curing process is sensitive to any precipitation, [and] our focus is giving the district a quality product,” Martin said.
Marsman acknowledged that there were several schools in the greater Grand Rapids area that also installed new tracks, which, paired with sporting events, had caused scheduling conflicts.
“There was some scheduling [issues] where there were a lot of other tracks being put in,” Marsman said. “It [took] a bit longer than we would have liked, but we will have a nice, sparkling track.”
Rockford Construction did what they could to hurry the process. Martin noted that Northview was very understanding towards the problems.
“That included evening and weekend work to make progress with the track as much as we could while accommodating the district’s ongoing events,” Martin said.
Currently, the track is painted red and only needs the race lines painted on the surface to be finished. Marsman claimed that the fresh coat of paint alone has “spiced up” the stadium. He is excited for the new track to be installed and said that it is a focal point in the community.
Additionally, Marsman said, “We’re really trying to make it a first-class stadium and keep it nice and clean and fresh. A good track certainly goes a long way.”
Despite all of the frustrations from the delay, Marsman seemed to be impressed with Rockford Construction and all of their subcontractors’ work.
“It’s smooth as ice cream out [on the track]. It’s very nice,” Marsman said.
