By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

When Nick Smith is home from college next week, he'll stop by his alma mater to say goodbye to the gaping hole he fought to fix.

Smith, a 2004 Wai'anae High School graduate, was a state champion hurdler and captain of the school's track team.

One day last spring during track practice, Smith decided he'd had enough.

"I think I heard somebody telling a joke about it one day and it just made me mad," Smith said at the time. "We're so accustomed to it that we can joke about it. That should never happen."

The "it" is a sinkhole in the school's track roughly

20 feet long, 15 feet wide and 6 feet deep. In two places, the track crosses over a ditch that leads to the ocean. In the fall of 2002, firefighters responding to an emergency medical call during a JV football game drove their engine in. The truck made it over the first bridge, but as it crossed the second, the structure gave way underneath. It took a tow truck meant for tractor-trailers to get the fire truck out.

Since then, the hole has remained. In fact, it has grown as the edges eroded.

For two years, Smith, his teammates and all Wai'anae athletes who use the track for conditioning had to make do. They would start at one end of the hole, run to the other side, puka through the fence and cut across the grass to complete a "lap."

Making do was one thing. Accepting the unacceptable was another.

"My coach was pushing us, saying 'Any of you can do something' and I thought, 'Yeah, why not,' " Smith says. "I just went home one day and wrote a letter and came back with it and showed everybody. Anybody could have done it. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner."

Smith attended a faculty meeting where he was told school officials had exhausted all options for getting the track fixed. There was talk of a debate over who should pay for repairs: the state, which owns the track, or the city, which owns the fire

truck. He asked his father, a mason, if it was possible to get student volunteers to fix the hole themselves. But it was a big, big job.

Smith then wrote an eloquent, angry letter describing the frustration of talented, hard-working athletes having to train in a facility that was horribly broken. He sent his letter to city and state lawmakers, to news-

papers and television stations and to two congressmen. He gave interviews and posed for pictures beside and inside that gaping hole.

His most direct response came from Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, who said she set aside money in the state budget for repairs.

Smith is now at college

in L.A. at the Art Institute (along with four other '04 Wai'anae grads). Last week, his mom told him she ran into Sen. Hanabusa, who gave her the good news:

The hole is finally going to be fixed.

Russ Saito, comptroller of the state Department of Accounting and General Services, says the design for the repair has been completed and bids for the job were opened in

October. The contract to build a new bridge and replace the track on top of it was awarded to Namba Construction on Nov. 29.

"We will give the notification to proceed by the end of this month and then we're hoping within 120 calendar days or so, it will be completed," Saito said. "Work should start in January. We couldn't make it for football season, but we're trying to get it done by the start of the track season."

The cost of the repair is $182,000 and will come out of DAGS' repair and maintenance funds.

Smith still runs three days a week in California. When he launched his fight, he knew that if his efforts to fight the bureaucratic black hole were successful, he wouldn't be around to enjoy the results. Still, he's pleased that his rabble-rousing will make a difference for the athletes who come after him.

"It helped me realize that if you want something done, you have to get it done yourself," Smith says. "Somebody else might not be as passionate about it as you or they might not be affected in the same way, so if you feel strongly about something, you have to take action yourself."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.