×
×
homepage logo

Construction forces move to fairgrounds

By Shawn Linenberger - | Aug 31, 2005

Home won’t be quite the same for the Tonganoxie High cross country team.

For the last several years, the team held its home meets south of Washington Street on the school district’s 80 acres of land.

However, with groundwork under way for a new middle school on that property, the team can’t run there for the time being.

When the team opens its season with the Tonganoxie Quadrangular on Thursday, the Chieftains will be running at the Leavenworth County Fairgrounds, a site the team hasn’t used in about 25 years.

“It’s a little different course,” THS coach Phil Williams said. “There are no hills at all. We run better on hills because we train on them.

“Other than that, it will be a nice place to hold it.”

Williams also noted the new site will have water and electricity, amenities the former course didn’t have.

The course will start near the fairgrounds exit, which is west of Second and Evans streets on the northeast corner of the fairgrounds. It then will run around the fairgrounds to the north, as well as recreation commission baseball and softball fields and the horse arena on the west side of the fairgrounds.

The course then will parallel Kansas Highway 16 before heading back north near Evans Street to the starting point.

Williams doesn’t plan to bid farewell to the 80-acre site permanently. Once construction finishes on the middle school campus, Williams plans to use the acreage for future meets, possibly starting next fall.

“It’s much more challenging of a course,” Williams said of the 80-acre site. “I’ll have to change it all quite a bit, but I’d like to use that course again.”