Watertown High School's track and field athletes are going to have to wait another year to compete at home.
On Thursday, Watertown School District Activities Director Craig Boyens announced that the 60th Watoma Relays track and field meet (scheduled for Friday, April 25) have been cancelled for a third-straight year.
For the second-straight year, the culprit is ongoing work for the second phase of upgrading the athletic facility at Allen Mitchell Field.
"It's hard to pull the plug on it, but it's the right thing to do, I think," Boyens said. "We have to get the construction finished."
The Watoma Relays is one of the longest-running track and field meets in South Dakota, having started in the late 1950s. The meet, which was often held in shaky weather conditions, was cancelled only three times from 1965 to 2017. It has now been cancelled five times (including three years in a row) since.
The opening phase of the upgrade at Allen Mitchell Field, which including installation of a turf field and resurfacing of the track, was held in 2023. Watertown officials had planned to move to meet to Webster before it was cancelled due to snow and wet conditions in Webster.
The second phase of the project started last spring a couple of days after the Watoma Relays were cancelled again because of a chilly weather forcecast. The project isn't expected to be completed until July. It includes seating (3,700 capacity) for home fans on the west side of the field, press boxes, stadium lights and a building for bathrooms, concessions and locker rooms.
In an email, Boyens listed four reasons why the decision was made to cancel this year's meet:
- We do not have power yet so we don't have a PA system and would be relying on a portable system that would not be loud enough for a track and field event.
- We do not have access to our fieldhouse yet, which means we don't have access to bathrooms/concessions.
- The home side bleachers are still a part of the construction project and we do not have use of that side so the fans would be sitting on the back stretch for the meet.
- With this still being a construction site, there was minimal access to some of the field events which created some concern in regards to safety.
For many of those same reasons, Boyens said the idea of scheduling a smaller meet (maybe a ...