Ten years later, track is reality

a front pager...

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

Ten years ago, a Saratoga High School junior opened the phone book and started dialing numbers.

He told the folks on the other end of the line that he was having a meeting in the back of a restaurant and invited them to come hear what he had to say.

Laying out his plan in front of the 10 or so who gathered that night, Scott Stevens wondered what he had gotten himself into. He was not the first to propose building a new track to replace Saratoga High School’s dirt oval that saw an average of seven to eight days of use a season due to its perpetual muddiness. Stevens had started an uphill battle and more than one person in the community reminded him that the project failed before.

To a high school junior, even two voices can be a roadblock, and Stevens remembers that. But he had other plans. “I told them thank you for your help, but I’m going to learn the hard way. So you can either help or don’t come back,” he said. “A few said I couldn’t, so that got me motivated.”

Holding a few more initial meetings, Stevens dragged in members of the community to ask for help, but soon enough, he was getting calls from those who wanted to be involved. Eventually, the core group materialized and formed itself into the Saratoga Track Association. The group, with Stevens as its youngest and most vigorous member, gained nonprofit status and created a mission statement. “It was a huge learning experience,” Stevens, now in his late 20s, said. “I had no idea how to really start it.”

As president of the association, Stevens partnered with Laurie Johnston, making the assistant track coach his vice president. Together, they rode the roller coaster of success and defeat.

Stevens and Johnston faced their first and most difficult task in obtaining the land for the track and planning how to supply water to it. With the help of Saratoga-based PMPC Civil Engineering, the association chose the site. It immediately faced a problem: The land belonged to Carbon County School District 2, and the school district could offer no money to fund a project that was in its flighty dream stages.

“I told them all we want is the land. No need to give us money. If they gave us an inch, we could see how far we could go,” Stevens said. “They gave it to us.”

Stevens and Johnston soon found that their board of parents, teachers, coaches and community members was going to have to collaborate with Saratoga’s Town Council, other officials and the school board. With no success in other attempts to locate water, the association found it needed to tap into the town’s supply to begin work at the site. More long hours paid off when an agreement formed and the town gave the green light to proceed with design.

Even under normal circumstances, building an all-weather track is time intensive in Wyoming’s cold climate. In the track association’s battle, one year quickly turned to two, which quickly turned to eight, nine, and now 10. “I can’t believe it is going to be done, after this long,” Stevens said. “It’s kind of surreal.”

When Stevens went to college, Johnston took the reins. “It’s just awesome that she continued one young man’s dream,” Stevens’ mother, Laurie Forster, said of Johnston. Johnston was flanked by Saratoga High School athletic director Rex Hohnholt and she eventually conceded the presidency to Jim Larscheid, who by day works for Sinclair Oil Corporation.

In 2005, after eight years of hard work and in-kind donations of time, services, materials, supplies and money from the community, the Saratoga Track Association successfully won the funding of the school capital facilities system.

“Because of the ground (the community) had laid, it was enough for them to give us the money,” Johnston said. She said the association received approximately $300,000 of donations from the community and businesses of Saratoga, as well as grant money from the District 2 recreation board. The project is ultimately worth more than $700,000.

Stevens, now a Wells Fargo employee and owner of Impulse night club in Des Moines, Iowa, pointed out that by the time they finally brought the project under the noses of official funding sources, it was more than halfway complete. “We got to the point where we needed a track, and the school and government could just complete the one we’d started,” Stevens said.

The Saratoga track is the largest project that Stevens has been involved in. “It’s cool to think I made all the first calls,” he said. But he wasn’t the one who finished it. “The town did that,” he said. “This track is not just a track. It’s what the town has done together. It shows it can pull together and do great things.”

Johnston agreed. She named the companies, individuals and board members who endured year after year of monthly meetings to see the project come to fruition, all on volunteer time. “The community was showing us that they wanted to do it,” Johnston said.

In early March, 10 years of sweat and tears should pay off when the track finally opens. Johnston’s proudest moment will be to see the track finished.

“The kids now run on pavement in the streets or on the golf course,” she said. “Just to see them actually have a facility where our jumper can jump outside, our runners can run on an all-weather surface ... is probably the greatest sense of accomplishment ... to see that we finally have a track,” she said.