In the early 1990s, Dan Grossman envisioned Thetford Academy playing host to some of the region’s largest high school cross country running events. A quarter century later, it’s hard to imagine an autumn going by without them.
TA this morning once again will entertain an equivalent to the town’s population when it hosts the Vermont State Cross Country Running Championships for the 25th consecutive year. It’s the longest active school host site for a state title event in Vermont and believed to be the second-longest for any sport and any site, behind basketball at Barre Auditorium.
Nearly 1,300 athletes will compete on the 5-kilometer Dan Grossman trail in boys and girls races from all three divisions, plus “challenge” races for those not included on their team’s top seven for the main race.
It’s actually only the second-largest — and second-longest-tenured — race the school hosts every year. Last month, Thetford staged its 26th annual Woods Trail Run, typically drawing around 2,500 athletes from about 75 schools from across New England and New York.
Every fifth year, Thetford hosts another 600 runners or so in the New England championship meet a week after states, most recently last year.
Of course, it takes more than the runners to make races of this size operate smoothly, and Thetford has proven a more than capable community. About 150 volunteers turn out for each event, performing services such as set up and breakdown, start/finish line help, a hospitality room and parking assistance.
Even average spectators join in prior to the starting gun, lifting rope off the ground to mark the boundaries of the course and funnel runners to the woods, helping create a communal atmosphere while Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell Overture plays over the sound system.
Former Thetford Academy Head of School Martha Rich was in her first year on the job when the trail was being built. Unaware of the scope to which the events would grow — the first Woods Trail Run had 75 runners — they became something she most looked forward to each fall.
“The thing I love most is the spirit of the events,” said Rich, Thetford’s head of school from 1991-2010. “It’s like a festival. You wake up early in the morning and there are as many people coming into town as there are living there. There’s a real sense of excitement. It’s thrilling to see the student-athletes race with so much spirit and dedication, surrounded by all of these volunteers are supporters.”
Many credit Woods Trail Run founder Grossman for the machine the events have become. He recruited trail-builder John Morton to design and build the course and rounded up the first wave of volunteers. Fundraising for amenities such as food, portable toilets and timing services was performed entities by the volunteer corps until 2003, Grossman noted, and the same group continues to take responsibility for operations on race day.
Dave McGinn, a former Thetford athletic director who now holds that title at St. Johnsbury Academy, took over meet director duties from Grossman in 2004.
“I really just believed in community spirit driving the events forward,” said Grossman, whose daughter, Emily, captured three state titles and two Woods Trail Runs on the course during its early years. “I made a lot of phone calls to get people involved, asking people to help, and not everyone had kids in the school. I gave volunteers different tasks and had crew leaders for different groups: parking, assemblage, take down, all of it.”
Count Peter Blodgett and his wife, Ruth Mayer, among the event’s most devoted volunteers. The couple has helped break down the course following nearly every event over the years, arriving once Blodgett, a public librarian, finishes his Saturday shift.
“We take all of the fencing down, wrap everything up and put it away,” Blodgett said. “We put away all the pop-up tents, then we walk the grounds with trash bags, picking up any litter. The idea is that it looks just as good as before the races, if not better.”
Thetford’s reliability has given consistency to a previously nomadic state championship event, which alternated between different sites in the Montpelier and Burlington areas prior to 1992.
Aside from Thetford’s dedicated volunteerism, the site’s longevity may also be attributed to the appeal of the trail itself to both runners and spectators. Like many courses, it begins and ends in an open field. Unlike many others, it comes out of the woods numerous times, allowing supporters to see the progress of runners without chasing them or waiting until the final stretch.
Coming in and out of Thetford Hill State Forest and featuring views of Smarts Mountain and other New Hampshire summits to the east, it was one of the first trails designed by Morton, now a professional trail builder and consultant.
“We had spectators in mind when we did the route. A lot of the cross country courses you see don’t have a lot of spectator-friendly spots,” Morton said. “A lot of the courses that do have open areas are sort of cobbled together, going over parking lots or roads, pieces of golf courses or whatever is there. Ours is essentially a pair of 2½K loops, a lower loop and an upper loop, and the runners come back into sight five or six times. That’s not bad for a 5K course.”
Rich is impressed with the diversity of the volunteers, some of whom have little to do with the school beyond race days.
“You’d have people who would speak out against funding for the school for certain things, but you’d still see them volunteering for the meets,” she said. “Any conflicts would be put aside on race days. That’s why I looked at them as a celebration.”
Grossman, who can be spotted snapping photographs at the events these days, relishes their educational value first and foremost.
“I don’t refer to (the runners) as athletes or even student-athletes; to me they’re simply students,” Grossman said. “We hope that students can learn from our events what a community working together can do.”
Jared Pendak can be reached at jpendak@vnews.com or 603-727-3225.