Indoor track season is wrapping up at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Roxbury, but for new executive director Richard Ward, his race has just begun.
A native of Roxbury, Ward, now three months into the job, told The Reporter that he is planning to leverage his 30 years of non-profit experience, along with his Hall of Fame track and field background, to make the facility a community hub for sport, wellness, and conversation.
“The major thing is we want the facility and space to have a strong community presence, and we want this facility to be considered not just a world-class track facility, but a facility that offers the best wellness programming within our community,” said Ward, the third manager of “the Reggie” in the last 16 years,.
The Center is now 30 years old and had a robust year of celebration last year led by its owner, Roxbury Community College. Ward replaced Michael Turner, who was director for about 18 months before leaving for an opportunity in Texas.
Ward attended the Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester, where he was a standout track athlete. He was a walk-on to the track team at Boston University, where he specialized in the 400m hurdles. He qualified for the US Olympic Trials in 1984, running alongside greats like Edwin Moses and Roger Kingdom. In 2016, he was inducted into the BU Athletics Hall of Fame.
Richard Ward. Seth Daniel photo
But his background isn’t just about running. He spent many years with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston (BGCB), and directed the Roxbury Clubhouse in the 1990s. He also spent 20 years at The Boston Foundation, and was most recently back at BGCB as the associate vice president of Government Relations and Community Engagement.
“It was interesting to be able to… come back to a place like the Reggie Lewis Center and leverage my track background and the business and community work accomplishments I’ve had and put it all to work here,” said Ward.
Though the first priority this winter was getting the indoor track season up and running (the facility can see two or three high school track meets per day with thousands of runners), Ward said he has already formulated the three pillars that will build his vision for the Reggie: “Move, Focus, and Connect.”
“One thing I’m looking to do is make this place a world-class facility that hosts more of the elite – not just high school – but the elite meets and events we had in the past,” he said. “But I also want to make sure we’re not just a track and field facility, but a strong and influential wellness program and a community conference and connection space. Those are the three things I’m really looking at.”
The Reggie is a massive space, with its field house, basketball courts, fitness areas, and other rooms and gathering spaces. Despite that, there has been a significant amount of head-butting over use of the facility for indoor track between Boston Public Schools students and students from suburban schools who come to participate in meets at the Reggie in increasing numbers every year.
Time is valuable in that situation, and there has been no shortage of grumbling from the city and community folks who feel that they have been getting “pushed out” in recent years.
Ward said he’s aware of that perception, and that folks need to understand the Reggie is a state-wide facility that requires access for all athletes in the state. Still, he said he expects some changes.
“I think we’ll always have some instances about being able to utilize a facility as busy as this is, but my own personal experience as a community person is that community access is important to me,” he said. “We are going to make sure the community has access to this facility in a way they perhaps didn’t feel they had before. We are going to make sure that access is there.”
Part of that goal includes growing track and field youth programming in the facility with workshops, clinics, and fundraising efforts to get neighborhood kids into the sport. He says it also means enlarging the size and scope of tried and true programs like the ‘Sensational Seniors’ older adult program that has operated for years out of the Reggie.
“I love this program and want to see us expand it,” he said. “It’s already pretty large, but I want to go a lot deeper with that group. These three pillars of Move, Focus, Connect – with that group on the connect side, it’s a real opportunity to connect with them on healthy living and wellness for folks that are aging.”
It also means, he added, stressing the community and conference space, which he would like to re-brand as a place for fundraisers, galas, and panel discussions.
“We’re very fortunate this is a very large and nice space,” he said. “Anybody that wants to hold a large event – a gala or conference – we can do that. We do a lot of it now, but we have the capacity to do a lot more. We need to make people aware of that.”
Turner had begun a capital improvement plan with an emphasis on the “deferred maintenance” over the previous 10 years. One project already funded and in the design phase includes replacing the roof over the field house and basketball courts, replacing the bleachers, updating the lighting, and installing a new HVAC system. Ward said that in May they will begin to “scale back” and “plan where and how to do that construction work.”
In addition, the track surface needs attention, but funding isn’t in place as they thought it would be. Ward said that while they can make small repairs, the time is coming for a big investment in the track.
“We have a Mondo surface now, which is the best and most durable,” he said. “We are happy to have that. But when we have thousands per day running on it, it definitely wears down faster that it needs to.” That huge project will be moved into the planning stage soon after the roof project finishes in the next two years.
Until then, Ward said, the effort will be put into instilling a mindset in the Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan communities isn’t just a track – but a place to be active and healthy, both physically and mentally.
