Scott-Thomas’s fundraising puts Guelph on track for success

Not long ago, a local Guelph reporter wrote that if you wanted to see Canada’s next generation of long distance talent, you needed look no further than Cooks Mill Road on a Sunday morning. Sure enough, the next week people started showing up to practice. Some came to watch; others came to run but the inclusive spirit that has animated every aspect of Dave Scott-Thomas’s formidable resume remained.

Dave Scott-Thomas isn’t just any coach. He’s the force behind the wildly successful Speed River Track Club and the architect who has built University of Guelph’s dominance in every distance over 1500 metres. Now, he wants to build a track that won’t just cater to the elite but to the entire community.

“I want a centre that reaches out,” Scott-Thomas said. The doors “should always be open.” This attitude isn’t common in high-level athletics but running has always been a little different, and despite the heights that his athletes have climbed, Scott-Thomas hasn’t forgotten that community matters.

Situated in a natural amphitheatre and adjacent to Guelph’s famous arboretum, Scott-Thomas has a vision to build nothing short of the Mecca for Canadian distance running. And, if all goes according to plan, the new eight-lane outdoor track will become the first Canadian track to be designated as the official centre for distance running in this country.

The planned track is going to be part of a larger renovation of existing University of Guelph facilities and with or without Scott-Thomas’s fundraising will be part of this plan. This isn’t about whether or not the University of Guelph will construct a new track – what’s at stake in this scenario is the quality of the track that will be built. However, if the University is going to build a track anyway, what’s the point of going through all the time and fund-raising effort to simply make a better track?

It’s not an easy question to answer and if there is a reasonable response, it’s likely a combination of evolving ideas concerning what constitutes a great track and the continued dissonance between jogging for fun and running to compete.

Fifty years ago, Roger Bannister broke the four-minute barrier for the mile on a cinder track, and for most Canadians, advances in track technology have remained frozen in time ever since. This doesn’t make sense, particularly when Canadians’ enthusiasm to build hockey rinks is considered, but this is the reality.

And this reality has everything to do with a discordant perception of the sport.

Different visions

Any runner who has been forced to jump two or three lanes in order to pass joggers deeply immersed in conversation or who has been forced to roll the dice while trying to discern which direction most people are running, understands that there is a fundamental disagreement regarding the purpose of the track in this country.

The people who make decisions on the future of athletic facilities seem to have little knowledge on the importance of a track to competitive runners. Many recreational runners have little use for tracks and are happy enough either ambling through a familiar subdivision or watching television on a treadmill. And when joggers do choose to go on the oval, an official size, eight-lane 400-metre synthetic surface makes no difference to them. But try to host a track meet on an awkward size crumbling surface. It can’t happen.

Canadians have a conflicted relationship with tracks. At one level, almost every high school and university has an outdoor track. Yet at another level, these same tracks are often poorly structured, neglected and, more often than not, left in varying states of decay. Tracks on their own are not profitable and are usually add-ons to artificial-turf fields or indoor gymnasiums.

“The recent expansion of the [athletic] complex at Trent was self funded,” explained Bill Byrick, Trent University’s athletic director. “We raised $4 million and now I have a $12 million mortgage.” The turf field built on the inside of the non-standard 413-metre track is what pays the bills and certainly what the track makes room for.

“We have 95 varsity rugby players, 46 varsity soccer players, 40 varsity lacrosse players, and over 2,000 Campus Recreation participants in field sports,” Byrick added. Athletes, in other words, who are willing to pay for an all-weather artificial field that opens early in the season and closes late. The use of the Trent turf field alone generates $1 million dollars collected through student fees with an additional $60,000 brought in from the Peterborough Community at large. Tracks don’t have the same lure.

“It makes no economic sense to fund a track,” Byrick said. Runners and track aficionados may not like it but this is the cold economic truth.

Fundraising plan key to success

None of this has dissuaded Scott-Thomas and although the logistical challenges that are endemic to raising $1.4 million inside a year remain harrowing there may be something different happening in Guelph.

Make no mistake, the financial hurdles are significant. Due to the tight time frame, a government application isn’t possible, leaving Scott-Thomas with the challenge of attracting the attention of both large and small donors. Although the fundraising is still in an accelerated planning process, Scott-Thomas has a number of ideas ranging from naming rights to the track all the way to what he calls “the Howard Dean model of raising money,” raising $1 at a time through online sources. He may even offer the opportunity for supporters to purchase naming rights for each metre of the track.

But money, although a significant factor, is only part of the story going on in Guelph. In a country that seems intent on putting the cart before the horse, Guelph is different. Too often massive infrastructure projects have been built on the faulty premise that people will flock to the new rink or speed skating oval as soon as the ribbon is cut simply for the fact that it is new. The Ontario landscape alone is littered with underused and underappreciated venues.

Prior to Queen’s University building its own athletics complex, varsity cross-country and track athletes used to travel to a 200-metre indoor track that had been built in a joint project funded by the Canadian Forces and Royal Military College. In a decision that only the military could contrive, the same year the field house opened, RMC promptly scuttled both their cross country and track teams.

This project may be different not because it’s any less expensive or any less ambitious than what other schools and communities have built. It may be different because the spirit behind the endeavour is singularly unique.

This isn’t a track that hopes to attract runners to a community bereft of them. It’s a state of the art facility that will showcase what is already alive in well in Guelph, Ont. Reid Coolsaet’s breakthrough performance in the marathon not only put Guelph on the map but caused many Canadians to reconsider what they thought had previously possible for home grown talent. The fact that Speed River athletes have mounted podium after podium has only deepened the mythology and broadened the possibility for what is rapidly becoming the sharp end of Canada’s running renaissance.