If it’s good enough for the president, it’s good enough for Syracuse athletes.

Last month, Beynon Sports Surfaces, the same company that installed a racquetball court at Camp David and an indoor track at the White House during the Clinton administration, completed new indoor track facilities at Manley Field House.

The new state-of-the-art, cushiony surface is a vast improvement compared to the old track surface. After 25-plus years of wear and tear, the old tartan track was removed in July.

The disposal process cost more than $100,000 because the tartan contained hazardous mercury that was incinerated at a treatment plant in Texas. The cost of the new track was not revealed.

The new surface is equipped with a new sandpit for the long jump and a new pole-vaulting area, which has yet to be used.

‘(The old surface) was very hard and it compacted with all the activity on it,’ SU Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel said. ‘Just like a field, it starts to compact and get hard and you have to change it.’

When the track was uprooted this past summer, many fond memories went with it. Originally, the football team practiced in Manley Field House on a dirt floor. A 176-yard wooden-board track was placed over the dirt floor and used for relay races during halftime of basketball games.

The tartan track was one of the first of its kind to be installed in the early 1970s. Former Orangeman and Olympian Tony Washington, the current Big East record holder in the discus, and Olympian Lee McRae of Pittsburgh, a one-time world record holder in the indoor 60-meter dash, competed on the old surface.

The new track has seen little action thus far. The indoor track team will begin workouts in November. However, the track was supposed to open in August.

Uncooperative weather delayed the tedious construction process significantly this summer. Certain treatment processes can be interrupted by hot weather. Still, training for fall sports was not severely affected by the delay.

‘We had humidity problems,’ said Dick Shippee, Beynon field superintendent. ‘One of the biggest delays we had was over how to deal with the waste when we were taking out the old floor. They didn’t want anybody else working in here while the shot-blasting and dust was going to be around. They pretty much shut everybody out of here for a week.’

The faint smell of polyurethane still wafts through the air as basketball players dribble over it on their way to the court.

The Beynon design is only 12 millimeters thick, but it has three specific layers that each take 24 hours to settle. The base is a rubber granulate. Next, a different type of granulate surface is used to give the track texture. Lastly, polyurethane is sprayed over the top to encapsulate the granules and solidify the track. Line-marking paint is put on top to create regulation-sized boundaries for competition. The result is a softer track that’s easy on the joints and easy to clean.

‘Some of the other sports teams actually thought it was a lot rougher, but for an indoor track, it is pretty smooth,’ cross-country and distance coach Jay Hartshorn said. ‘You can notice the difference just walking on it to how it felt last year.’

Published on October 14, 2003 at 12:00 pm