By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            Bronson Town Council members gave the Bronson Middle High School track program approval to use James H. Cobb Park for a cross country meet on Sept. 28, but the mayor also opened the door to possibly improving the town’s track at the park for use by the school.

            Bronson Middle High School Track Coach Rod Thomas and the School Athletic Trainer Brad Morgan said they appreciated the use of the park for the cross country meet because the park provides a better running course than they could provide on the school campus where sugar sand is the dominant soil type.

            “Hopefully in years to come we can build this cross-country meet bigger into maybe a Saturday all-day event involving more schools, a concession, and maybe tie it into a Fall Festival to get more people to come and see it – that’s years down the road,” Morgan said.

            He said part of the challenge is finding the funding to purchase timing units. He said the units aren’t cheap. He said they may want to charge admission to cross-country events to generate money for the purchases.

            Thomas and Morgan said they also want to begin building the track program by making improvements to the track at James H. Cobb Park. The need to resurface and repaint the asphalt track was brought to the council’s attention at the previous council meeting by Spotlight.

            “I think we can get away with just restriping it and hosting Bronson track meets there,” Morgan said. “There are a lot of other improvements that need to be done. It will take more time.”

            He said they also need to figure out a spot to build a pole vault box and runway. He said the long jump runway needs to be rebuilt.

            “I think a lot needs to be done. Again, it’s down the road,” Morgan said.

            Thomas said people have reached out to him and offered to help. They are telling them to just let him know when the date for the work needs to be done. They are willing to do the work if someone can just pay for the materials.

            The original track at the park was built by a county road crew headed by Jimmie Jerrels when he worked for the Levy County Road Department. Jerrells now owns his own successful paving and hauling company. He supervised building the original asphalt track.

            Thomas said he wants to do something just to get the track program started at the park, which is why he and Morgan are talking about restriping the existing track and moving forward from there, “because resurfacing can be really, really expensive, especially if they have to repaint it.”

            “Me personally, I don’t like running on asphalt. It’s hard on the knees. I’d rather have some type of light rubber finish, but again, that can be down the road,” Thomas said. “We just need to get something so our kids stop going everywhere. We get them to 9^th grade. We don’t have facilities and when they go to compete at other places, parents say if we had this in Bronson – it’s very hard. If we don’t do something it’s going to be like everything else, we’ll keep going downhill.”

            Bronson Middle High School has never attempted to build a track at the school. The school board is currently involved in building the new Chiefland Middle High School. Construction monies are tied up for several years. The alternative is to use the existing quarter-mile track at James H. Cobb Park, which is surrounded by a regulation-size football field. The track and field were built as part of the park many years ago. The asphalt track is aging and cracked.

            Morgan said there is also talk about having a youth camp at the park someday and having Junior Olympics there. He said there is an established national group that runs Youth Olympics. Since Bronson is the county seat, a Youth Olympics program should start there. He said it could start small and grow to a countywide program and possibly qualify for regional events.

            “Sounds good,” said Mayor Beatrice Roberts.

            Town Manager Sue Beaudet said she will take a look at the budget and see what the town can do to help the track program.

            Spotlight had suggested using a Florida Recreational Development Assistance Program (FRDAP) grant to pay for the surfacing and restriping of the track, but Beaudet said it can’t happen in this grant cycle because the town has already applied for two other FRDAP grants. FRDAP grants have been used to build park facilities and maintain the park for many years.

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Town of Bronson Regular Meeting August 16, 2021; Posted August 16, 2021