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Track & field, at its best, is like a big three-ring circus. Down on the track, races are going on. In another part of the stadium, someone is jumping, and in the middle of the field, other athletes are throwing. It can make you dizzy trying to keep up.
However, for more than seven decades the University of Texas’ track & field facilities have not offered this experience to track fans. While the track in Royal-Memorial Stadium was fine for spectators, some of the jumping events were held at the far south end of the stadium, so removed from view that they might have well been across the street. And the throwing events really were across the street — all the way over at Clark Field, observable only to those willing to miss some running events and make the trek over there. What UT really needed was a completely self-contained stadium built specifically for track & field.
This point was driven home to me on a personal level last year: Hobbling around on crutches with a freshly sprained ankle, and attempting to cover the Texas Relays for Trackwire Online, a national track webzine, I was in utter misery as I tried to move back and forth from Royal-Memorial to Clark. The inconvenient five-minute walk between venues became a 15-minute struggle in my impaired state. If the construction of Mike A. Myers Stadium & Soccer Field could have been completed a year earlier, that would have suited me just fine.
Myers Stadium is the answer to the prayers of injured journalists and other track geeks. And, as it turns out, the new track & field facility at the University of Texas benefits more than just mildly handicapped fans. The results of the 72nd Annual Texas Relays show that it also is mighty hospitable to healthy runners, long-ignored field athletes, and lightning-quick times.
Indeed, it was hard to find a negative word to be said among Texas Relays spectators about the state-of-the-art, $13 million stadium, even among those who didn’t have a directly vested interest in promoting UT’s new arena. Fans, athletes, and coaches alike all loved the 20,000-seat venue, which ought to give a boost to Longhorn coach Bubba Thornton’s hopes of snagging a three-year contract for Austin to host the NCAA championships.
The reasons for such enthusiasm were multiple, and speed is an obvious one: No fewer than 14 meet records fell (18, if one counts first-year events), 11 of which were in running events. Much pre-meet hype had been devoted to the nine-lane track’s unusually wide turns — because the stadium surrounds a soccer field instead of a football gridiron, it is considerably wider than your average American track, and hence, the turns are much gentler.
And indeed, the effect of those curves were most obvious in the various sprint relays, the source of most of the records: In the 4×100 meters relay, meet standards were revised in the university men, college men, and university women’s divisions; the high school boys and university women set new marks in both the 4×200 and sprint medley relays; and the university women (specifically, the Texas Lady Longhorns) carved a new notch in the 4×400.
And the Arkansas men and Brigham Young women, respectively, threw in new 4×1,500 and distance medley marks for good measure.
One person who spends a lot of time on those turns is Texas quarter-miler Suziann Reid, defending NCAA champ in the 400 meters. Asked if wider really is better — perhaps a silly question after she helped her team to a very fast win in the 4×400 and an NCAA record of one minute, 30.93 seconds in the 4×200 — Reid said, “Yeah, the turns are similar to the Penn Relays. Usually at the Penn Relays I always compete well. I don’t have to lean into them as much, and the surface is great; that’s what makes the times [so much faster].”
But really, there’s a much more important advantage to the new setup: it’s just flat-out fan-friendly. And in a sport as starved for fans (at least here in America) as track & field, that also translates to athlete-friendly.
Now that track & field has a home of its own at Texas and there is no worry about damaging the oh-so-precious football field, throwers (except for those in the potentially dangerous hammer throw) can return from their exile at Clark Field and compete in front of thousands of spectators, rather than a few dozen. And those jumpers, previously visible only with binoculars, now enjoy fired-up hand-clapping to send them down the runway.
“This is a lot better [than previous Texas Relays],” said Louisiana Tech’s April Malveo after she threw the discus 187 feet, 10 inches, a mark which will qualify her for this June’s NCAA championships. “People actually get to see you throw.”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t guarantee that they will watch — most people this night, as well as the announcer, were distracted by the running events — but Malveo picked up at least one enthusiast who might not have seen her otherwise, an unidentifed woman who kept yelling out “Go April!”
“Yeah, I didn’t even know her,” Malveo laughed. “My coach was cheering and she just sort of joined in.”
Ironically, the pole vault benefits from being somewhat less visible in the new arena. In Royal-Memorial, the event was held on a wooden runway in the middle of the football field, but now it is tucked into the northwest corner of Myers.
“This is awesome,” said Candy Mason of Kansas, right after watching teammate Andrea Branson break her Relays pole vault record. “We’re closer to the crowd. Last year we were in the middle of the field. Having the people close up in the stands gets you fired up.”
“In the other stadium, it was a weird feel,” said Branson. “We were just in the middle, with everything towering over you.”
As for the fans themselves: “This is gorgeous,” said Tonna Duke, an assistant athletic director with the Richardson, Texas, school district, as she watched former Richardson athlete Erin Aldrich (now a Lady Longhorn and national champion) in the high jump. “I like having everything in one spot. I hated going out to Clark. I like the ninth lane [most tracks have eight lanes], and the wide curves.
“It reminds me of big stadiums in Europe, because of the sights you can see from it,” Duke said, referring not only to the sights on the track, but also Austin’s skyline, including a great view of the state Capitol dome.
“I like the whole facility,” said Austin resident Anthony Moore, who was there to watch his daughter run in the high school division. “It looks like a track facility, not a football field. The football stadium was too big.”
The stadium is not perfect, and some kinks still need to be worked out. The upper deck and westside bleachers have not been completed yet, and the temporary bleachers set up where the deck will be did not offer a good view of the homestretch, but the permanent seats are expected to be higher and at a better angle.
The stadium’s size could also pose some problems for the state high school championships — while the more intimate setting works well for college track, the high school meet has consistently drawn much more than Myers’ 20,000 capacity. The UIL has committed to keeping the state meet in Austin, but will it be big enough?
“That’s what we’ll find out here in a couple of weeks,” said UIL assistant athletic director Peter Contreras. If it’s not, there will be some mighty unhappy parents in town.
And finally, reporters (including this one) grumbled about the press box, which did not have direct access to the track, but that only affects us media types.
On the upside, the stadium has escaped some of the wrath that has been directed at the sports facility expansions at UT lately. The university has been justly criticized for maintaining a cutting-edge athletics program that never suffers from want, but failing to pay its staff adequate living wages. However, Dr. Shelley Payne, chair of the Faculty Council, says that UT faculty aren’t too unhappy with Myers Stadium since it was constructed with private funds rather than out of UT’s budget. “The problem the faculty has is this perception in the Legislature that UT doesn’t need increased funds because they can spend on new stadiums,” giving the appearance that all UT departments are rolling in dough. (UT’s athletic department is considered an “auxiliary enterprise” of the university, and is expected to survive without funding from the university itself.)
“My son runs track,” says Peg Kramer of the University Staff Association. “In spite of being an activist, I’m a big jock at heart.
“Spending on athletics is great,” Kramer said, “but it shouldn’t be done at the expense of the institutions. … But I also think that the athletic department does a good job of keeping house. They always finish in the black.”
It probably goes without saying, but UT’s coaches express complete love for their shiny new toy.
“It’s awesome,” said Bev Kearney, coach of the national champion Lady Longhorns, repeating an oft-used word. “There is no other way to describe it. The radius of the turns, having the crowd right on top of you, it’s great.”
Asked how it felt to be first fiddle in the track stadium, rather than second fiddle at the football stadium, Kearney countered, “It’s not that we got slighted at Royal-Memorial, but the good thing here is that it was built with track & field in mind. This stadium shows the support that track has at UT.”
Of course, UT dug up Royal-Memorial’s track to make room for more football seats, but Thornton pointed out that the school didn’t just lay down a track with a few bleachers in a pasture.
“Look at this stadium,” Thornton said. “This is a commitment to track & field. Not many universities make this kind of a commitment to track & field. [Athletic director] Deloss Dodds deserves a lot of credit.”
Thornton hopes to bring the NCAAs to Austin for a three-year run. However, he will have to convince the NCAA that the previous low attendance figures at Austin in 1984 and 1993 won’t be repeated. One of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S., Austin offers more distractions for potential track fans than do smaller NCAA hosts like Boise, Idaho, and Eugene, Ore., which can draw 15,000 followers per day to the stands. In Austin, with its beautiful swimming holes and wild nightlife, there are plenty of other things to do besides watch a track meet. However, Thornton thought that with better marketing, that could be turned into a plus rather than a negative.
“If you come to Austin, the athletes can stay here, they can go out and eat late,” Thornton said. “People come to Austin for other things, but that’s good.
“And Austin’s weather is good. Some people have complained that the heat would be hard on the distance events, but the weather in Boise could affect as many as 18 events. The heat might be hard on the 5K and 10K, but that’s just two events. Coaches would do their athletes a disservice by not bringing them here. We have good equipment, fine facilities, and an officials’ association that is second to none.”
And if the stadium still needs more endorsements, they couldn’t get a bigger one than this: “This is world-class,” said Donovan Bailey of Canada, the 1996 Olympic champion and world record holder in the 100 meters, who lives in Austin and trains at Myers. “You can hold international competitions here. What’s important is to have a sense of warmth, and you get that with the fans close by. Texas has done a good job putting money into this. This is one of the best tracks in the States.”
The real track & field scene, however, is in Europe, where world-class runners like Bailey get superstar treatment. How does Myers compare to the stadiums of Europe?
“The facilities in Europe are great,” Bailey said, “but the fans are what makes Europe great, and it’s the fans that make it great here.”
A version of this article originally appeared in Trackwire Online at http://www.trackwire.com.
This article appears in April 16 • 1999 and April 16 • 1999 (Cover).