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For Immediate Release

The new Rekortan® running track inside Harry Perone Stadium at Spring Valley High School, Columba SC.

When Spring Valley High School in Columbia SC hosted this year's prestigious Taco Bell Classic Track & Field Meet, they did it on a brand new Rekortan M99 track installed by Chattanooga's Competition Athletic Surfaces.

This year's event attracted more than 137 teams from the southeastern and eastern United States, ten times the number that attended the inaugural meet in 1981. The growth in numbers parallels events widening reputation, according to Spring Valley coach and meet co-director John Jones. "This year, it's probably the top track meet in the Southeast and one of the strongest in the nation," Jones said.

As the meet grew, however, so did the wear and tear on the Harry Parone Stadium track. Last year, Spring Valley decided to replace the track surface with Rekortan, a 100% polyurethane product of Pennsylvania-based Advanced Polymer Technology Corporation.

Earlier this year, an apocalyptic rainfall left much of Nashville, Tennessee reeling from the worst floods in memory. Among the submerged were the city’s municipal tennis courts at Centennial Park, but a unique partnership among Community Surfaces, Sport Master and Competition Athletic Surfaces had the tennis center back in operation in 48 hours.

The remarkable makeover was captured on video and edited into a 30-minute documentary that aired this fall on the Tennis Channel. The show captures the flood’s devastation, focusing on the damage to Centennial Tennis Center’s eight courts.

A tennis court is not a parking lot. A running track is not a street. These statements should be so obvious as to not even warrant mention. But, evidently, they're not obvious to many people embarking on new facility construction. Too many instances occur of tracks and courts being built that don't meet the recommended specifications for their construction...

AT&T Field, home of the Chattanooga Lookouts, with its brand new Spurtan E warning track installed by Competition Athletic Surfaces

It seems appropriate that a team named the “Lookouts” would pay close attention to their warning track. That may be why Chattanooga’s AA Southern League baseball team called in Competition Athletic Surfaces to re-vamp their perimeter surface.

“We needed to replace both our warning track and the perimeter drainage system and I wanted a solution that we could count on to last for many years,” said Lookouts owner Frank Burke. Burke knew of two Major League ballparks that had employed a running track-type surface for their warning track, and he was interested in doing something similar at the team’s AT&T Field.

The first order of business was to excavate the old track. Steve Clift, president of Competition Athletic Construction, oversaw the project, working closely with Bo Henley, the ball club’s head groundskeeper. They replaced the perimeter drainage system, installing a SportsEdge XT running track-type slot drain, and then covered it with asphalt pavement.