Oak Park and River Forest High School has been around for 150 years, but it has never had, until now, a standard-sized outdoor track. But last month, a new, state-of-the-art, eight-lane, 400-meter track opened on the OPRF campus.
The track surrounds an artificial turf field that is lined for football and soccer. The new track is located just north of Oak Park Stadium.
“It is very exciting to not only have our own training and competition facility on campus, but to have one of such high caliber,” said OPRF head girls track and field coach Nick Michalek in a statement. “This is going to provide athletes a lot of opportunities for success. It also now gives us a home that we can call our own during the outdoor season.”
No home track and field meets are scheduled for this spring because OPRF officials were uncertain last year whether the track could be installed in time, and the school does not yet have all the equipment to host a meet.
The track and field has four rows of metal bleacher seating on one side of the field. The bleachers can seat more than 800 people. The field will mostly be used for underclass football and soccer games and practices.
Spokesperson Karin Sullivan said that she doesn’t know the exact cost of the new track and field.
“We haven’t received the final bills for the athletic fields project yet, so I’m not able to give you the final cost just yet,” Sullivan said in an email.
The new track is open for community use outside of school hours. Saturday afternoon some teenage boys were playing touch football on the field.
Up until now, OPRF track teams usually practiced at the Concordia University track during the outdoor track season. This required busing some of the members of the team to Concordia for practice. Some track team members, especially distance runners, ran to and from Concordia.
OPRF did have at one time a small, limited cinder track around the football field at Oak Park Stadium, but it was not the regulation 440 yards or 400-meter distance.
“The only semblance of an outdoor track was the cinder rectangular area that was on the perimeter of the football field, which was really not ideal nor functional for any type of practice,” said former OPRF runner Jim Westphal, whose state championship in the 3200-meter run led OPRF to the boys state track and field championship in 1987.
In earlier days at the school, the football field was also the outfield of the baseball diamond, which meant that there could not be a track around the football field as at most other high schools.
“There was a cinder strip in front of the stadium seats for dash races for sport days,” said Don Vogel a former OPRF administrator. “I believe, eventually the cinder strip went around the entire field after the baseball field was reoriented to face northeast.”
OPRF removes student for residency reasons
In other recent action at OPRF, the school board voted on Jan. 11 to remove a student, only identified as Student 202312, from OPRF because it was determined that the student did not live within the boundaries of the district. This was the first student to be removed for residency reasons during the current school year. Out-of-district students at OPRF are charged an annual tuition of $23,772.74.
OPRF has the right to try to collect out-of-district tuition for the time that the student was enrolled at OPRF, but school officials said that they have not yet decided whether to try to do that. It is often difficult for schools to collect tuition money from non-resident families when a student is kicked out of a school for residency reasons. School officials declined to comment about any specifics in the case, citing student privacy reasons including how long the out-of-district student was enrolled at OPRF, how much money the student’s family owed the district, or where the student lived.
Board approves special ed settlement
At a Jan. 11 special meeting, the OPRF District 200 Board of Education also approved a mediation agreement in which OPRF will pay a student’s family $47,400 to resolve a dispute regarding the special education placement of the student. School officials declined to comment on the case.
Correction, Feb.8, 10:44 a.m. The article was updated to correct the capacity of bleacher seating. It is more than 800. We apologize for the error.
