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By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist
The Wai'anae High School track team starts off on one edge of the huge, gaping hole in the school's track, runs around the track until they get to the other side of the hole, pukas through the fence and crosses the grass to get back on the track again. That's the only way they can do a lap.
"Run down to the hole, cut across. Down to the hole, cut across," is how head coach Derek Higa describes it.
It's been that way for a year and a half now, ever since a mishap during a JV football game.
Chad Brown photo
Nick Smith, captain of the Wai'anae High School track team, decided one day that enough was enough. Somebody had to do something about the hole in the school's track.
Nick Smith, a senior at Wai'anae High School and captain of the track team, decided to do something about a large hole in the middle of the school's track.
"I think I heard somebody telling a joke about it one day and it just made me mad," Smith said. "We're so accustomed to it that we can joke about it. That should never happen."
To call it a "hole" in the track is being polite. This is hardly a dip or a divot. It is roughly 20 feet long and 15 feet across and perhaps 6 feet deep at its lowest. There's concrete rubble and exposed rebar on the bottom along with some mystery debris like the trunk of a coconut tree and a couple of beer cans. The thing is a crater, and it's gotten bigger as time has passed.
"There used to be a little more of Lane 1," Smith said, "But a section about three feet long just fell in."
It happened during a football game in the fall of 2002. A player on the visiting team got hurt and emergency crews were called to the field. A fire truck responding to the call was driven across the track to get to the injured player. The track is built over a drainage ditch that empties out to the ocean. In the two places where the track crosses the ditch, small bridges were built. The fire truck made it safely across the first bridge, but when it crossed the second, everything crumbled under the weight of the truck.
"The truck fell in and got stuck," Smith said. "It took a tow truck meant for tractor-trailers to get it out."
The fire truck was rescued but the hole remained.
Looking for help
Smith started his mission by attending a faculty meeting. "They basically told me they had exhausted all their options," he said. External to the school, amongst the powers that be, there was some debate over who should pay to fix the track, the city, owner of the fire truck, or the state, owner of the track. Smith, a champion hurdler, set his sights on the roadblock of bureaucratic inertia.
"When the school brings it up, maybe it comes off as complaining, but when I stepped up as a kid saying these things, I guess it's more powerful."
He wrote an eloquent letter and sent it wide. He described the hole in the track and the crumbling concrete bleachers around the field that are cordoned off because they're not safe. He put into words the frustration of a talented team trying to work around the damaged track. Smith sent his letter to State Reps. Michael Kahikina and Maile Shimabukuro. He contacted State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa and City Councilman Mike Gabbard. He wrote letters to two newspapers and four local television stations. He e-mailed Congressman Neil Abercrombie and Senator Dan Inouye.
"I figure, might as well try," Smith said. He also recruited fellow track team member and Searider Productions photographer Chad Brown to document the situation in a series of pictures.
Media center brand new
The Wai'anae track and football field abuts the shoreline, which is part of the problem. The salt air corrodes the structures over time. In stark contrast to the athletic complex is the brand new, state-of-the-art media center that opened last year just mauka of the track. In the new facility, everything is gleaming. There are three plasma screen TVs, a host of Macintosh G5 computers in a video edit suite and wireless Internet capabilities. The media center, home to Searider Productions, is a source of great pride to the school.
But this is one of those "you win some, you lose some" situations.
On the other side of campus is the room that burned in an electrical fire during spring break. That incident drew a lot of attention and help from community donors.
But the hole in the track went almost unnoticed outside the school until Nick Smith starting sending out his e-mails.
"People told me they didn't even know about it," Smith said. Even though the football team uses the field, even though soccer uses the field, even though every sport at Wai'anae that runs for conditioning drills uses the track, people had gotten used to running around that big, awful pit.
Said Coach Higa, "It's hard because we have state-class athletes but they have to work around the hole. I guess the kids start to feel like, does anyone care?"
Politicians respond
Smith got responses from Kahikina, Shimabukuro and Hanabusa. In fact, Hanabusa set aside $1 million in the state budget for repairs to Wai'anae High's track and bleachers.
"I managed to get your track repair and the bleachers into the budget," Hanabusa e-mailed Smith. "It is now up to you and your classmates to get the governor to release the funds. Please contact her and ask that she support these CIP projects."
So that's exactly what Smith is doing.
There's just two weeks left of the track season and this is his senior year, but Smith says even though he won't be around to enjoy the fixed track — whenever it gets fixed — it will be a relief for him to know that it's going to happen.
Meanwhile, his coach is trying to make the best of it.
"We're still better off than some. We're better off than Kapolei High School. They don't even have a track. They have to run around the buildings," Higa said. And then added, "Well, we're slightly better off."
Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
