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Great American CC Meet
Changes Ownership
National Scholastic
Sports Foundation
Story On Great American
By Marc Bloom
Friday night lights for high school cross-country?
That’s one of the many enhancements under
consideration by the National Scholastic Sports
Foundation, which has assumed ownership of the Great
American Cross Country Festival and begun to make
plans for the 2003 event.
“We want to add to what is already a great meet,”
said Mike Byrnes, who heads the NSSF, a non-profit
foundation, with Jim Spier. “We hope to make the meet
more what Rick Hill had originally intended--a
celebration of running with pomp and pageantry.”
The NSSF, which also conducts the Nike Indoor Classic
in Landover, Maryland and Adidas Outdoor Nationals in
Raleigh, North Carolina, last week purchased Great
American from Rick Hill, a commercial real estate
developer who founded the event in 1999. Great
American gives the NSSF major meets in all three
seasons and makes the organization the most powerful
force in high school track and field and cross-country
nationwide.
The Great American meet, founded on the unique idea
of inviting top high school teams from around the
country, started in 1999 with about 85 schools and
1,700 athletes. This season’s meet, held on Sept.
27-28, featured more than 250 schools and 4,000
athletes, along with national-class college races. The
meet, which boasts Nike as the presenting sponsor, has
become the premier cross-country team event in the
nation.
“I feel very comfortable passing on Great American to
the National Scholastic group,” said Hill, who is
leaving the sport and moving to Louisville where he
grew up. “There’s no question they will do an
incredible job. They’ll take the things that are
working well and build upon them. They’ll take any
pieces that are broken and fix them.”
The same NSSF professionalism that has made its
indoor and outdoor track extravaganzas must-run meets
for high school athletes will be provided to Great
American, which has gone through difficulty finding a
permanent home. This year’s site, the Ballantyne
Resort in Charlotte, was the event’s third site in
four years.
Cross-country, subject to the elements and sprawled
among many acres, can prove unwieldy to manage. In its
second year, in 2000, Great America saw its course at
McAlpine Park flooded by rain and the meet was almost
cancelled. Hill pulled off a miracle in running the
meet but then changed the site in 2001 to Winthrop
University in nearby Rock Hill, South Carolina. Teams
were spread among many hotels in the region.
Seeking a central location, user-friendly meet
headquarters and a more challenging course, Hill
switched the event to Ballantyne where it was run on a
hilly golf course. Pre-meet rain affected the meet
again, making the course muddy and posing a challenge
for effective course management. It was an exciting
but trying weekend.
The NSSF will have its large staff of officials,
already in place from the indoor and outdoor meets,
ready for duty at Great American. The organization is
considering a number of sites for the event, all in
the Carolina region, and will announce the 2003 site
later this fall. Whatever site is chosen, the NSSF
expects it to be a permanant home as the organization
nurtures cross-country with many new ideas.
One thing’s for sure: there will be a new date. Next
year, because a Jewish holy day falls on the last
Saturday of September, Great American will be held one
week later on the first weekend in October.
“The later date will work in the meet’s favor,” said
Spier. “Teams will have another week of training. The
weather should be a little cooler. And there will be
less chance of lingering rain as the hurricane season
is over.”
The NSSF hopes to streamline the entry process as
well as the many tasks coaches have to perform in
order to get their teams to the starting line. The
meet will make use of the latest in technology to
speed all processes. Spier himself has worked in the
computer field for decades.
In its fifth year, the event will become more a
festival with music serenading the runners as they
compete, bands playing as they do at major marathons
and other features. “We hope to jazz things up,” said
Spier, “and give the athletes an exciting experience.”
Part of that excitement could come from racing on
Friday evening instead of Saturday for the Race of
Champions teams. “Friday night lights,” especially in
the South, adds to the luster of high school football.
The NSSF feels that same intrigue can enhance
cross-country.
The college races are currently held on Friday night,
and this season the fields were better than ever with
a superb national entry. The reigning NCAA champion
BYU women competed, and they defeated national powers
like Arkansas, North Carolina State and Georgetown.
Northern Arizona won the men’s title. The NSSF has
vowed to keep the college divisions and possibly
expand them. There are also plans to add youth races.
The NSSF reputation, emboldened from more than a
decade of serving high school athletes, will now
operate year-around on behalf of the high school
community nationwide. Committed to the promise of
“giving U.S. Olympians a head start,” the NSSF,
established in 1990, has provided more than a
half-million dollars of travel assistance to athletes
so they could have the opportunity to compete in
national meets. Over 60 percent of the 2000 U.S.
Olympic team was made up of athletes who had
benefitted from NSSF support.
Last June, the NSSF funded the travel of 26 high
school athletes to the USA Junior Nationals in Palo
Alto, Calif. This was the qualifying event for the
world junior championship in Kingston, Jamaica, in
July. Of the 26 athletes, 17 made the U.S. team,
enhancing American efforts at the worlds, and many of
these same athletes will likely be contenders at
future Olympic Games.
One of the “graduates” of NSSF track events is Alan
Webb, the celebrated mile recordbreaker. At Great
American this year, Webb, sponsored by Nike, was on
hand to sign autographs and the line of fans stretched
about a hundred meters. The NSSF will have Nike
performers at future meets as the field comes full
circle--athletes who were given a head start in high
school returning as professional stars to teach the
young ones how to excel.
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