| Groveport Madison High School has fielded a varsity track and field team since the early 20th century. Track and field was among the first sports, along with baseball and basketball, that the school offered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The track teams competed on makeshift tracks and at other schools until the mid-1930s when a new track and field complex was built around the original football field of Groveport School (now Groveport Elementary), that once sat on the school’s west grounds along Wirt Road, a site that is now the home of two baseball fields. The oval, quarter mile cinder track – along with high jump, pole vault, shot put, discus, and broad jump pits – was a gift from the Groveport Madison High Schools classes of 1929-33. The track was composed of crushed cinders, a common material for tracks of its day, and its course was lined with low, wooden boards that defined its path. At certain points of the track were wooden blocks that measured starting points for relays and other races. The track was used until the late 1970s when a new track was built at the current high school on South Hamilton Road. There are few traces of the old track still visible as it is now overgrown with grass. However, the concrete circular pads for the shot put and discus are still visible. Pictured here, posed on the old track with some of their trophies, are, from left to right, Don Barrett, Coach Butz, Steve Montgomery, and Sam Johnson, who were members of the 1970 Cruiser Mid-8 League champion track team that competed on the old track. (Photo from the 1970 Madisonian yearbook.) |
