The Hermon High School outdoor track and field team finally has a place to call home.
For the first time ever, the Hawks were able to host a track meet on Thursday.
After years of busing to other schools for meets and practicing in empty hallways, Hermon High School has its own sparkling new track facility. It is part of a multimillion-dollar athletics complex project that was several years in the making, and school officials, student athletes and community members alike are thrilled about its arrival.
Senior runner Rex Bateman said team members have been ready for the new eight-lane rubber track facility, and Bateman thinks it shows how the Hermon program is growing.
“It’s really good to see this program just come alive,” Bateman said before the first and only home track meet of his high school career, which was also senior night.
Freshman runner Ella Johnson explained the excitement of surveying the new facility and appreciating that, “Wow, we have a track of our own now.”
Hermon track assistant coach John Holyoke, who is a former writer and editor for the Bangor Daily News, said the program has gone from 13 students on the spring track team when he started coaching there two years ago to more than 60 now.
Holyoke said the program has seen successful teams and strong individual competitors over the years. “But there’s never been a place where they could call it their own. Which makes it really hard to train,” he said.
Now instead of having to bus kids to other schools to use their facilities or come up with makeshift practice spaces in Hermon, the team has that place of its own — both for practices and for meets.
“And then the added benefit is, we get to host things like this,” Holyoke said. “It’s hard being road warriors all the time when kids live on a bus.”
The track facility adds to other major upgrades at the school’s athletic complex, where football and soccer players have already been enjoying a new turf field. Town voters approved borrowing $3.9 million for the athletics complex project in 2022 by a wide margin.
Athletic director Rick Sinclair explained how the track project began with a committee in 2019 and evolved from there over several years.
“We had a plan in place, and then the world changed in 2020, right? So everything got kind of put on the back burner,” Sinclair said, explaining how the plan and its cost were revisited and then put to the town for a vote. “Luckily they were generous enough to vote it in for us.”
Sinclair also credited the generosity of two local families, the Pottles and the Danforths, who donated money to support the field and track projects.
“These two facilities would not be possible without these two individuals and their families’ generous commitment,” Sinclair said during a ribbon cutting ceremony ahead of Thursday’s meet.
Brett Danforth was on hand Thursday afternoon and helped cut that ribbon with members of his family, who own Danforth’s Down Home Supermarket. He said his family has always worked to support the community, and he knew firsthand about the need for this facility as a former track athlete at the school and now a parent of three kids in the district.
“All the practices we had to do were in the high school running in the halls, or makeshift distances outside,” Danforth said. “I think it really stifled participation in the sport as well. So having this facility should help facilitate greater participation amongst the students.”
And the program is already seeing some growth.
“Our track numbers are as high as they’ve ever been for indoor and outdoor,” Sinclair said. “I think the facility and what we have to offer now has something to do with that.”
Danforth sees the facility having community-wide benefits as well.
“A track and field facility is one that everybody in the community can benefit from, of all ages,” he said. “It’s a safe place for people to come up and walk and exercise, or gather. And so a track and field facility was a perfect fit for us to support.”
There was plenty of excitement Thursday as the Hawks prepared for their first ever home meet in that new facility. As Sinclair pointed out, every top time at that inaugural meet would be a record.
“We were pretty hyped,” Bateman said after he and his teammates got ready for the historic meet. “We were ready to set some records.”