by Larry EderThe Toro Park Cross Country course was one of my favorite courses when I coached with Joe Mangan at Foothill Community College, from 1990-1996.
Subject: Saving the Toro Park Cross Country Course
We hope you will distribute this to your running club.
If you have been a high school runner in Northern California in the past 30 years you may have run a cross country race in Toro Regional Park between Salinas and Monterey. We usually don’t get involved in political activism but this situation calls for it.
There is a proposal to turn the primary meadow (Badger Flats) in beautiful Toro Regional Park into a softball/football field complex for a small group of kids and exclude everyone else from this area. This private development in a public park would ruin the iconic cross country course that has been used for the last 30 years. 20 cross country meets scheduled for the fall would be cancelled including “the Earlybird” with 2,500 runners, and CCS finals, as well as numerous local meets. It is amazing to us that the Monterey Parks and Recreation department would even consider this proposal.
We, as a group, can really help make this project end and show how much regional support there is for cross country.
You can help by sending emails to the district supervisors and the Monterey Parks and Recreation Department. There are other places to put softball fields than in this beautiful public park that houses our Cross Country course. Make it personal if you can. Forward to your friends as well so they can do the same thing.
Use your own words and it can be short, but title it something like “Keep Toro Park open for the Public” or “Save our Cross Country Course” or whatever you wish that states the main point in the title because they probably won’t read them all but they will get the point for sure.
If you want to learn more about the arguments look at the Salinas Californian editorial/opinion/page of Friday May 9th.
Emails should go to all the following: If your emails come back “mailbox full” just wait a day or two and send it again. Put your name at the bottom for sure and your city if you want and for sure if you are an Olympian or someone special (like I’m sure you all are) then say that.
Thanks very much.
