For a running community as strong as the Santa Clarita Valley, it hasn't held many major meets over the years.
The biggest was a CIF-Southern Section championship meet in 1979.

Jeff Gilkey, who has been around cross country in the area for two decades, knew about that meet for one reason.

"I was at a coaching clinic earlier this summer, and that was one of the trivia questions," laughs Valencia's head coach. "That's the only reason I know that."

So how can the Santa Clarita Valley attract bigger meets in the future?

For starters, the area needs a high-level cross country course, which it hasn't had since the College of the Canyons course was closed around the turn of the century due to school expansion.

The valley's two main courses are now at Castaic Lake and Central Park, both of which are passable but have flaws. The city and running community are working to redesign the course at Central Park.

"I think getting a quality course in Santa Clarita will make it a much more desirable place to come to," Gilkey says. "People are reluctant to go to cross country meets where there aren't good bathrooms, where there aren't hills. ... When this course is done, if it's what we think it will be, it'll be comparable to some of the better courses around."

If a redesigned course is implemented at Central Park, it could attract high-level meets in the future. One of those meets could be either the CIF-SS prelims or finals, both of which are currently held at Mt. San Antonio College.

But prying those meets away from Mt. SAC won't be easy.

"The No. 1 question is 'why?'" says Hart head coach Larry David, a longtime veteran of the local running community. "Mt. SAC has been set up over the years to be what it is and do what it does. As nice as it may be to host, you'd have a hard time convincing a lot of people."

Along with Woodward Park in Fresno, Mt. SAC is recognized as the top course in the state of California. It features a good combination of flat and hilly terrain, and there are plenty of parking spots and places to watch the race.

Thousands of runners attend the Mt. SAC Cross Country Invitational during the regular season every year to get a feel for the course before potentially running it again in the postseason.

Such popularity will be difficult for a high-level Santa Clarita Valley course to overcome.

"It's like saying, ‘Stop watching Johnny Carson, we've got this new guy who may or may not be funny,'" David says.

If the redesign does in fact take place at Central Park, there will still be plenty of benefits.

Perhaps the most tangible benefit will be the local schools' ability to host invitationals and thus raise more funds for their programs.

Canyon High School currently hosts the Canyon Cowboys Cross Country Invitational at Castaic Lake every year. In addition to raising funds, the invitational also helps promote the community.

"Sixty-something teams come to our meet, and having them come down to Central Park would bring more to the city," says Canyon co-head coach Paul Broneer. "We sell tickets to Magic Mountain at our meet. A lot of teams, the reason they choose our meet is they can take their team over to Magic Mountain and have a nice day."

The revenue for other businesses in the city is another potential benefit to hosting an invitational.

The logistics of hosting a big meet at Central Park, however, are anything but beneficial. It would likely take a lot of volunteers to pull it off, and there are other considerations.

"That park is used by so many other people and soccer and football and all the other sports," Broneer says. "Parking is always an issue. ... We'd probably have to send all the school buses over to Saugus (High)."

Unless something is done about those issues, it appears that the valley would be best served to host a smaller invitational.

David praises the job that Ojai has done in hosting the Ojai Invitational, which brings between 20 and 30 teams each year and races every grade level at once.

The meet is split into four races: the small school girls, the large school girls, the small school boys and the large school boys.

"It's a 25-minute race and boom, you're done," David says. "Four races, and you're heading out of there by 1 o'clock. That's a nice quick way to do an invitational."
It could be the way the valley eventually does it.

No matter how it happens, it would further augment the Santa Clarita Valley's running reputation.

"It would expose the community as a very good running community," David says. "Certainly, the better schools would be aware of the tradition and the other schools would learn of the tradition in this valley."