BY SCOTT SULLIVAN
EDITOR
Saugatuck High School, whose trophy cases groan and keep growing with state cross country trophies, may have found a home course at last. Except …
“Angelina,” co-coach and teacher Rick Bauer said of his wife, “and I have been in the area for 18 years and coaching most of that time.
“When we started helping Mike Shaw (who helped resurrect school XC and track programs in 1999), we had wondered why we didn’t have a course.
“Well, we did,” Bauer went on, “but it was in Fennville (on Fenn Valley Winery grounds) and we shared it with Fennville.
“The logistics of that were difficult; it wasn’t too far away but too far to get out there with any consistency. Due to it also being a business, it was difficult to get out there and work on it.” Forethought, grooming and toil make courses of action click.
“So while it was a ‘home course,’ it felt more like a course that we hosted on but had little connection with,” Bauer went on.
“We had always wanted something in Saugatuck we could have access to year-round. We have been all over the state at meets, and were jealous of places that had dedicated courses.
“It was something we dreamed of, having a course, hosting meets, invitationals, regional championships … making Saugatuck a must-come-to invitational.
“I spent many toothbrush sessions thinking about a course and all the things I would want to do to make it special/unique. Taking all the cool things we have seen at various courses and putting it into one.
Like at Hesperia, which names parts of its course after athletes, “beautiful signage. Permanent mile makers made from large boulders.” Finish archways and starting line with team logos painted in boxes instead of numbers …
He and Angelina envisioned making the course more than a that, but a place that represents Saugatuck Cross Country. “Having a map of our town with QR codes that give menus, hours and locations of local businesses.
“I imagine,” said Bauer, referencing the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams,” “a course that embodies the same exclamation that Ray Liotta’s character ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson asks Kevin Costner’s character Ray Kinsella, ‘Is this heaven?’
“Except my response wouldn’t be ‘That’s in Iowa, this is Saugatuck.’ Such was the setup Tuesday, Oct. 17, when Saugatuck hosted Fennville peers and friends for training romp on land cut, groomed and cleared by landscaper Glenn Heavener.
It was on wooded scrubland some might find ugly, useless, gleaming as sun broke from trail clouds of passing weekend storms. Two (or more if you wanted) 1-mile loops touching on both the township’s 5-acre Tails ‘N’ Trails Dog Park and city’s 170-acre Old Airport Land.
Bought in 1936 for $12,000, it has served many uses, including storage for leaves, brush and public works equipment and a snowmobile club. Ravines golf course/homes wind east nearby, I-196 Blue Star Highway Exit 41 allows access to a brewery/yurt-rental operation culled from the long-ago Red Barn Playhouse, Belvedere Inn & Restaurant, “Mini Versailles” just across 63rd Street.
Visionaries’ big plan emerging from the Depression was runways, landing strips and amenities for air traffic soon to come. Nothing was built, no planes on record landed; the city has sit on the land … an 87-year investment that, more than once, has paid off.
Runners Tuesday had before them two 1-mile loops through woods, scrub, dips to wetlands up sandy climbs. Now where? Cross country painted white arrows and strings of SPS Trailblazer pennants pointed on …
“Good job! Hold your pace. One more loop. Downhill coming. You are almost there!” Where’s “there?” some runners lean to ask. Where I rest, recover, go back to less-important things until I can run again?
Bauer thanked assistant coach Ken Butler, township, city which Friday hosted a public-input meeting on what might be done long-ago runways that never did back then.
Not for planes, at least. For more information, call Bauer at (616) 848-9313, township hall at (269) 857-7721 or city hall at (269) 857-2603.