Eastside coach Ed Boehmke talks about the Greenville County Championships. Boehmke ran in the first county meet (1973, Berea).
The meet started in 1973 with two teams. Furman was host venue.
Photo, right provided
The meet has been around since 1973 when Berea (I was the third runner on Berea's team of six) and Hillcrest boys met for the first meet. (Hillcrest won.). Can you believe only two boys teams of five or six runners each to what we will have tomorrow. (Eastside had a team that year, but didn't come.). And the history of cross country goes back even farther - the 1969 state championships - the first one, even though it was not officially recognized as a state championship, had Greer in the results
It takes about one hour for course setup - cones, etc.
There’s about 10-15 volunteers on the course, five to six for parking lots, concessions and 15-20 to operate the finish line to get results.
Other than course prep - numbers, stickers, packets for 800 athletes (20 schools) - one person about two hours.
Timing used to be with a stopwatch and a tick sheet - a sheet of paper that had a place to write minutes and all 60 seconds in a column down the page, where someone actually checked off the time when a runner crossed. Of course the races were a lot smaller. We have used computers as watches and imported the times. Now we use stopwatches that are optically downloaded and inserted into the scoring program. Of course, some meets have timing chips.
The meet started with two boys teams in 1973 with 12-15 runners. It has grown to 20 schools with boys and girls and over 800 runners
Growth always brings challenges, such as increasing efficiency with timing and scoring which computers have taken care of. Entry is now done online where before it was done on a mailed in entry form. The course had to change to take care of the extra runners. Girls were added. Results were mailed, no website. Added JV boys and girls. Added an open run for coaches and anyone else.
The meet can only get bigger two ways - more schools, which is a slow process or the present schools having bigger squads. Carolina High is the only public high school that does not have a team and it would be great if it did. The private and charter schools have all increased the size and added quality to the meet. I (we) made an executive decision just Wednesday to increase the awards to 20 (from 15) and increase All-County to 20.
The Greenville Track Club started the meet in 1973 and David Wamer served as the director until the 1980s when I took over and held the meet at Eastside. In the 2000's sometime, we moved the meet to Cleveland Park and Greenville hosted with Eastside still doing the scoring and running the finish line. In 2009 or so we moved the meet to Heritage Park for two or three years and then to Hillcrest High. The move to Heritage and Hillcrest made a partnership with Riverside, Hillcrest, and Eastside to share the duties of this meet.
Since 1981, a winner of one of the two varsity races, and sometimes both, as well as many of the runners-up have gone on to win the state championship. The Hillcrest boys started the streak and the Riverside girls and St. Joseph's boys and girls continued the streak in 2013. And with the strength of the schools in the county, I see no reason for the streak to stop! And the title have been shared by many schools including Blue Ridge, Christ Church, Eastside, Mauldin, Wade Hampton and probably others that I can't remember.
