As Florida gets ready to kick off the 2014 cross country season, there has been much excitement being generated in South Florida as Tropical Park in Miami has been revamped by the Parks and Recreation Department, along with the help of local cross country coaches. Instrumental to the Miami running movement in many ways, Coach Frankie Ruiz of Belen Jesuit, has been in the forefront of promoting positive changes to our local parks. Within the last couple of years Indian Hammocks Park in Kendall and Tropical Park in Westchester, have been his main focus areas for the sport of cross country in our community. Two years ago Indian Hammocks Park was utilized for a few competitions, including the University of Miami Greentree Invitational thanks to Coach Damon Griffiths of UM, and now this year after a long summer of measuring, fixing course flaws and footing, re-measuring, putting in placement markers, and then measuring some more, we can now say that Tropical Park is back up and running.
It's been many years, close to a decade, since the traditional high school course at Tropical Park has been used for a large invitational; only small dual meets, middle school meets, or youth meets have been utilized for cross country competitions in recent years. And since the bad hurricane season of 2005, there haven't even been any markers on the course because they had all been damaged and removed. Losing Tropical has hurt Miami-Dade in many ways considering that it is one of the largest parks in the county, is centrally located, has Miami’s only real hill, and has been the home training location to many schools over the years including Coral Park, Southwest Miami, Christopher Columbus, and Lourdes Academy. So if it made sense to fix up any park
in the county, Tropical Park was definitely the big one.
In Coach Ruiz’s own words “Tropical Park is a haven for runners in Miami filled with lots of cross country and track history. It is exciting that a group of local coaches teams up with Miami-Dade County Parks staff to improve the conditions of the 5k Cross-Country course. There is hope that this sets the tone for the sport and inspires the creation of more courses in the Miami area. Onto the next park!”
Much time this summer was spent by Coach Ruiz, Coach Rebecca Rodriguez-Michalak of Lourdes, and Coach Ryan Raposo of Ferguson HS, plus his famous Raposo Wheel, in measuring the old course at and adjusting it to make sure it's properly structured and up to date for years to come. Of course there has been much support from Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation in making sure this all gets done properly and effectively, as mentioned above. Interestingly enough, the high school course from over 30+ years ago was originally measured and markers put in place by Coach Carlos Barquin, the first Belen Cross Country Coach and now Belen Athletic Director, and Bob Zell, a staple in Miami-Dade County for cross country and track, the now retired former Athletic Director at Ferguson HS.
Looking ahead there are already plans in place to redo the track & field facility at Tropical Park, and the first big cross country invitational in year is set to be hosted there tomorrow afternoon, the King of the Hill Cross Country Opener which is being hosted by Lourdes Academy and Christopher Columbus. One of the Meet Directors, Coach Eric Pino of Columbus had this to say about the course “It’s great to be back at Tropical. Teams have always ran here but now with the renovations that were made we can actually race here. All the main complaints that people had have been addressed. This is now a course fit for racing real cross country over multiple terrains which will not yield fast times but will measure a kid’s determination.”
