Chaos at Cold Spring Park?

In 2005, NN has four home meets scheduled. Unless bad weather intervenes to force postponement, each one of those meets will be held on a Tuesday, putting high school XC in conflict with the Newton Farmer's Market.

The Farmer's Market is a lovely event, but it comes close to overwhelming the limited parking and traffic control of the park. Having the Framer's Market makes it more difficult for visiting teams to get their buses in and out of the park. More importantly, the event results in greater foot traffic on the narrow paths of the park, where runners are trying to negotiate sharp turns and tricky footing.

It is really too bad that Newton North's program has to compromise the safety of kids and park-goers in this way. Holding meets at the same time as the Market increases the possibility for a runner-pedestrian collision. Understandably, the residents come to resent the runners.

Even when meets are not scheduled on Tuesdays, Cold Spring Park is not an ideal course by any means. Erosion on the path has left many rock and roots exposed, and already this season we have had runners go down with twisted ankles. A couple of years ago, a tree went down on the path during a storm, and the City didn't remove it for several weeks, forcing the XC coaches to re-route the course around it. It seems that there is no communication or cooperation between the school teams and the City regarding the course.

On the other hand, Cold Springs Park is a very nice place to gather for a meet. The open fields provide a nice place for the start and finish, as well as for team activities. Running the entire race on trails is much better than running it all or mostly on roads (as courses in Norwood and Framingham do).

It would not take much to make Cold Springs a better venue for cross-country. Avoiding the conflict with the Farmer's Market would be a start. A further step would be to provide signage to alert the residents of race dates and times. Barring that, NN teams should have monitors on the course to advise residents that a race is coming their way. A third step would be to mark rocks and roots on the course with orange or white paint.

If all else, fails, we could do what Newton South did and re-locate to a different venue.