The iconic early-season invitational will still have a flat, fast, open course, just in a new location - but still in reach of the beach.
For most fans of cross country in North Carolina, the Seahawk Invitational is one of the biggest meets of the season - it has fast times from a wide range of top teams, and it gives us an early glimpse of which teams are competitive and improved. For the UNCW coaching staff, however, it has also been a source of some frustration over the past few years, due mostly to continual changes in the school's athletic facilities that forced yearly changes in the course layout. With the prospect of more significant changes over the coming years, rendering the course nearly impossible to maintain, coach Layne Schwier explained to NCRunners that a new direction is needed:
Fortunately for UNCW athletics, but unfortunately for the Seahawk Invite, the athletics department and the recreation department (who is in charge of the large field where the races begin and end) are about to make some major changes that would make keeping the course in its current location impossible. We have seen this coming for several years and have been brainstorming ideas for quite some time. We turned to several local running groups and people like Colin Hackman for ideas. We simply didn’t want to the meet to just die because we couldn’t host it on campus.
For the 2014 edition, which will once again be sponsored by Omega Sports, an outside event management group will take over management of the meet. That's not the only change, either: the meet will be moved off of the UNCW campus and relocated to the Cape Fear Fair & Exposition property, which is adjacent to the Wilmington Airport. Just like the campus course, the layout will be open and flat, a double loop with excellent spectator access. The new management group, It's Go Time, will be adding several features to the meet and will try to make it even "bigger" in terms of its importance during the fall season. In Coach Schwier's words:
Enter Colin Hackman. We had discussed a couple of options with Colin including a move to a location at Oak Island, but then he came to us with the idea of holding it out at the airport on the grounds that are used for the county fair. None of the local golf courses would be willing to shut down on a Saturday morning so finding enough space for parking and running a large meet was difficult but the airport has enough room for both. We didn’t want the meet to die, but at the same time, we weren’t sure what we wanted our involvement to continue to be, especially if we left campus and no longer had the recruiting advantage of bringing athletes and their families to campus. But Colin is a bit of a visionary and a big time go getter. He has a growing meet management and timing company and also coaches at a local private school. He will take this meet and make it bigger and better than we could ever have had the time to. The airport location is easy to get to and teams can stay in most all of the same hotels they would have for coming to campus. The course as of now with rough planning appears to be a double loop, similar to UNCW’s course. It will be very, very spectator friendly and if it is possible, it is even more flat the UNCW’s course. It will be warm because there isn’t much if any shade out there. So teams will need to bring a tent and plenty of water. But I can guarantee that Colin will put on a first class event. He’s looking into opening it up officially to schools from outside of NC as well.
Registration for the meet will make use of a combination of MileSplit Meet Registration (for teams paying with school checks) and It's Go Time's own website (for anyone needing to use a credit card). Meet management hopes that the teams that regularly attended the meet when it was on campus will continue to do so, and they hope to attract (or win back) some other teams in the process, including out-of-state teams. If the competition isn't enough for you, there's always the opportunity for a team beach trip!
Omega Sports Seahawk Invitational Meet Page
(Entries open 7/1)