Running with an idea: Straight through the finish line and beyond

The following was originally published October 17, 2015.

Michelle and Gary Nolley may not have introduced the idea of a cross country course, or “dedicated facility” as they refer to it, at Blue River Park, but they sure ran with it. Pun intended.

“Everybody else has their dedicated facilities,” Michelle said. “Why shouldn’t cross country have its own dedicated facility?”

A year or so after Gary stopped coaching at Shelbyville High School (SHS) and Todd McCullough took over, public meetings began to discuss the construction of the park.

“And he and some of the athletes at the time went to the meetings and suggested to them that you know you ought to think about putting a cross country course in here,” Gary said. “You think about putting in basketball courts, or tennis courts or ball fields or whatever, but nobody thinks about this and I thought that was just a stroke of genius on his part.”

“I kind of just kept pursuing it because I know coaches come and they go, but I am here and I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

Equipped with the knowledge and experience he and his wife, Michelle, have obtained through years of operating a timing business, Alpha Timing, and their personal passions of running and competing which started early in their youth, the couple worked for the next eight years garnering community, city and county support.

The most unique aspect of the cross country course lies in the fact that it was built and continues to be maintained through volunteer efforts. Last spring, a group of SHS students asked to plant trees along the property. While the group’s goal was to plant 50 trees, they ended the spring project with 32 planted.

Gary said they plan to plant 10 more going into this fall.

In the future, the Nolleys hope to install a PA system, add landscaping such as grass, flowers and trees, as well as establish mile and K marks, add fencing along the finish line and put in a small operations building.

A little over a week ago, they finalized the design of the finish line structure and they plan to utilize volunteers soon to complete construction.

As the home course for Southwestern, Triton and Shelbyville, the Blue River Cross Country course which Gary and Michelle describe as “deceptively challenging”, has already been scheduled for many meets in just its second open season.

Last Sunday, USA Track and Field (USATF) held the fi rst competition in their Grand Prix series at the Shelbyville course.

“We were even actually the inaugural event for the whole series so they started the series last year and we were the first event of the series last year and we were first again this year,” Gary said.

Last year the event drew about 96 participants, while this year, 137 competitors traveled to Shelby County to race.

On Halloween, Franklin College will host their conference meet at the course, and the Christian Youth Organization (CYO) has scheduled to bring their roughly 1,000 runners to an event at Blue River Cross Country course.

The Nolleys also recently received the bid for the Region 7 meet for the USATF Junior Olympic Cross Country Championships. The meet typically brings in 400 athletes.

“To have one of their events here in just our second year is a huge for us because it exposes us to more meet promoters and decision makers, and we can eventually get some national level meets,” Gary said.

Although Gary and Michelle aim to attract larger, more prestigious events, they believe the course benefits the local community on three levels: recreationally, competitively and economically.

“It’s about making a positive story in Shelby County,” Gary said. “It is human nature to talk about the negatives and we seem to have more than our fair share of negatives, but this is a positive on every level from you walking your dog out there to eventually having people around the country come in for national meets.”

One of the main reasons the couple ventured forward on this project, this dream of theirs, circles back to when their oldest son, Matt was six-years-old and decided he wanted to start running with his dad, who ran through high school at SHS and at Butler University.

“We were in Illinois and did these Friday night series there, they called them ‘fitness runs’ and it was a big family night and that’s what we would kind of want to see out here,” Michelle said.