Sidelines
James wants UH track
to be picture perfectSHE sees every detail, even the ones that are still weeks away. She walks, circling the black asphalt and brown dirt, but that's not what she sees. Instead, there will be palm trees and colors and a rainbow hue. With each step, each excited breath, the future is coming alive.
She took a picture on the first day of construction, May 20, and almost every day since. Today they collectively have turned into one of those fast-action animation films. The plant that grows, the sun that sets. The kalakoa dream that springs to life.
That's what's happening here.
"We said we want this and we want that and we want that and they did it!" Carmyn James said, almost out of breath just talking about it.
And so this is where the electronic timing camera will go and here is the special tray that filters sand off of athletes' shoes and back into the pit. "We have beautiful sand," she said. They call it Australian Gold.
James is the Wahine track coach at the University of Hawaii, and after "a year and a half of meetings," her magical new track is almost here.
In her mind, it already is.
This goes here. That there. There will be crowds in the stands and H's everywhere.
She can see it.
Soon, very soon, we will, too.
THEY'LL come, all of them will, the high school kids and the recruits and the crowds and all of the mainland teams ready to charter planes just to fly into the sunshine and run on a dream. It will be shiny and new, state of the art and almost perfect. It'll be ready soon, Sept. 17 or Sept. 20 or sometime in between. And then?
"This should be the place to be," James said.
And track in Hawaii will be born again.
The dates are already set, March 21-23 and 28-29, the Rainbow Relays one week, the Rainbow Invitational the next. The idea is to have teams come for both, training in Hawaii during the week, a plan sure to make the tourism industry smile. Hawaii hopes to promote Punahou's Ralph Martinson Invitational to high school mainland teams, inviting the youngsters to stay to run in the Rainbow Invitational the following week.
They'll come, James said. From Canada, Australia, everywhere.
But best will be the ones who come from closer to home. Getting the high school kids on the track. Getting the people in the door. Sharing this jewel, this gift, this team.
Every day she watches from her window, she checks on progress, she takes a picture.
Every day someone reminds her of the softball stadium.
But that won't happen here, James said. Not with the construction crew she has, not with the scientific specifications demanded by the man from the Mondo track surface company. Not with the loving eye she and so many others are keeping on this project every day.
She can imagine the reactions of those seeing it for the first time, lanes filled with the colors of the rainbow.
"I think they're going to be in awe," James said.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com