Coach, volunteers create cross-country course at McClellan

Aug. 23—Imagine the glee Frazier Burroughs, who directs Anniston's Parks and Recreation Department, must have felt when John Moore offered to build the city a cross-country course — for free.

At McClellan, Anniston PARD facilities include a soccer complex, a combined softball/baseball complex, a recently renovated indoor natatorium and gym club, and a youth football field encircled by a running track.

Only three high schools in Calhoun County have a cross-country track: Oxford, Pleasant Valley and White Plains. Anniston High fields a cross-country team that features the county's boys coach of the year, Lisa Howard Holland, but doesn't have a home course.

Put it this way: Moore, the cross-country coach at White Plains, didn't have to twist Burroughs' arm on the notion of building a cross-country course at McClellan whose main attribute — its centralized location — will allow it to often, though not always, host the annual countywide meet.

"It's kind of a no-brainer really," Burroughs said.

Anniston High and the city's PARD may be the winners in this serendipitous partnership, but the unfinished course wouldn't exist today without Moore, who months ago began fleshing out the details of his cockamamie idea. Turns out, though, it was hardly far-fetched.

McClellan's cross-country course will hold its first meet — Anniston High's Bulldog Twilight — on Sept. 28. The course also will be open for public use, Burroughs said.

Moore, White Plains' cross-country coach since 2015, believed cross-country runners in Calhoun County faced two solvable issues: a lack of local courses and the need for a centrally located course that any school could use.

"So I started looking for somewhere that we could find a course that had a little up-and-down but also a lot of flat (trails)," he said, "so you could actually have a decent time."

Google Earth became his addiction last winter. Mouse clicks moved him around Calhoun County until he eyed locations at the former Fort McClellan, which the Army departed 22 years ago. Discussions with the McClellan Development Authority about potential sites led him to zero in on the soccer fields adjacent to the satellite campuses for Jacksonville State University and Gadsden State Community College.

Using a GPS-based pedometer, Moore plotted a circuitous track that starts and ends inside the soccer fields' fenceline, briefly ducks into the adjoining foliage and then meanders outside the fenceline along Summerall Gate Road on JSU-owned land.

Moore then hopped aboard his four-wheeler and drove the course. (He didn't go rogue; landowners gave him permission.) Most of it he liked. A few spots were too difficult for a high-school course, so he realigned the path.

"It's just trial and error," he said, though he knew he wanted a compromise between the county's fast track at Oxford and the hilly courses at Pleasant Valley and White Plains. "I wanted to make it a faster race."

When briefed, Burroughs and Anniston City Manager Steven Folks liked what they heard. It was time to break ground.

"It's been since January when I've been talking to everybody and their momma about getting this done," Moore said. "The hard part is trying to find people with machinery to help me out with it."

Turns out, it hasn't been as hard as he feared.

"I've got some friends that have big machinery and I'll pester them and say, 'Hey, man, can you come out here and do this?' And I guess they love me enough to do this for me," he said.

Nick Arnold, of Arnold Construction in DeArmanville, brought in one of those machines. The names Moore then lists — Tim Surrett, Ryan Church, Shane Champion, Derek Barksdale, Marcus Strickland, Mike Stovall, and JSU's track coaches, Matthew Boone and Roger Cooke — have proven vital to the project, essentially costing neither the city nor Moore a penny.

When finished, the course will be roughly 2 1/2 kilometers long and require two laps for a standard 5-kilometer race. The soccer fields' lights can be used for evening events. One of the course's enduring features is the portion carved out of McClellan forestland — a design feature Moore took pains to include.

"I just wanted a little wooded trail path to get a little respite from the sun," he said. "If they're going around in circles there on the soccer fields and out there on the JSU property and they're out in the sun the whole time, now they have about 600 yards, I guess, in the woods to catch a little break."

Phillip Tutor — ptutor@annistonstar.com — is a Star columnist. Follow him at Twitter.com/PTutor_Star.