Masters to have access to great new L.A. track
The May-June issue of California Track & Running News contains a very intriguing article about the new track at the Home Depot Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson — intriguing because it mentions the M-word three times. M as in Masters. USATF’s Southern California Association has submitted a facilities use plan that includes what it calls “masters development events.”
“The plan includes a proposal to solicit youth, open and masters clubs within a 30-mile radius of Carson to apply to Southern California USATF to make the Home Depot Center their ‘home track,’ ” the article said.
The track makes its debut on June 1, hosting the Home Depot Invitational.
The plant is a beaut. It has a nine-lane Mondo Super-X track built to NCAA and Olympic regulations, two vault runways, four shot rings, two long jump runways, two javelin approaches and two high jump aprons.
The Home Depot Center already has landed the 2006 IAAF World Cup meet and is bidding to host the 2004 USATF junior nationals, 2005 open nationals, and 2005-2007 NCAA meet. Could masters nationals be far behind?
Unfortunately, the track won’t be available to host this year’s Southern California Association Masters Meet. Andy Hecker, the meet director, has been forced to look elsewhere.
Mark Cleary, the USATF Masters Western Region coordinator, wrote me:
“This track will not really be available to us until the 2004 season . . . I plan to have our club host the regional there next year — as well as host a new meet — but we will see if they get their act together. . . . We are supposed to have access to the facilities for such things as organized practices or clinics — but those details have not come to the surface yet.”
The track is part of a $140 million, 85-acre sports complex at California State University Dominguez Hills. In February, the Home Depot Center was chosen by the United State Olympic Committee as a U.S. Olympic Training Center — joining others across the country and one near San Diego.
However, that SoCal Olympic Training Center (in Chula Vista) has been pretty much off-limits to masters. It’s hosted a Senior Olympics meet, but not much else of interest to masters.
Let’s hope that fate doesn’t befall masters longing to use the Home Depot Center.
