The days of running on asphalt at Trinity Lutheran High School have come to a conclusion.

The Seymour school’s eight-lane track is getting a makeover with the construction of a rubberized track underway.

“We want to take the next step to get the track program where it needs to be and improve the facilities for the current and future students,” Athletic Director Aaron Rudzinski said. “It makes it more attractive to incoming students when you have a track.”

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This project has been in the works for more than a year, Rudzinski said.

“Like with a lot of our projects, it has to do with a need, talking among parents,” he said. “Specifically with this project, we have a parent that has a vested interest with the track program that put a plan together and started looking for donations.”

Rudzinski said it will cost about $100,000 to get the new track, which will be 3/8 inch thick.

“It’s all donor-based (money),” he said. “There is no school-budgetary component to it. They’re all supporters of the school that find that it’s important to have (a new track) at the school. They actually raised a little more money than the target goal. That will allow us to buy things like mats to put across the lanes that the football players can use to get to the field.”

On top of the running lanes, Trinity also is having its high jump and long jump areas replaced with the new surface.

“In two weeks, they’re going to come back and do the rubberized coating,” Rudzinski said Monday. “People won’t be allowed on it for a few weeks after that. The goal is to be on it by the end of the summer. We’re going to protect it as much as possible with football going on.”

The school typically hosts two home meets during the track and field season each spring. The plan is to increase that number.

“The track really isn’t great to host,” Rudzinski said of the old surface. “We always wanted to give the kids an opportunity to have a home meet as well as a senior recognition night. When you start scheduling a lot of home events on a surface like that, you have injuries that you have to deal with. You’re running on asphalt. It’s not the greatest surface. It’s not fun for other teams to come in and run on that. We tried to limit the home meets because of that.”

The plan also is to use the new track for more than meets.

“There has been some talk about having invitationals and some youth meets,” Rudzinski said. “We’ve talked about how maybe we could start some track and field days with the feeder programs. We want to encourage kids to come to our campus. We could do one event per year and do it through their PE classes. We’re trying to figure out ways to utilize the new surface.”

Trinity’s first track and football complex finished construction in 2011.

“Last year, lights were installed on the track for football games,” Rudzinski said. “We’ve had walk-a-thons here before. We did it to raise money for the booster program. That would be something we could do now that we have lights and a better surface for that. That’s something we would like to bring back.”

Rudzinski said the returning members of the track and field program and coaches are excited about the project.

“It’s going to be a great asset,” he said.