Westmont cross country runners competing at the Westmont Invitational. (Presidio Sports Photo)
It was an end of era and the end of the innocence on Saturday when Westmont hosted its final invitational cross county meet.
For 32 years, coach Russell Smelley invited college teams from all over to run in the Westmont Invitational on the college’s picturesque course through the Montecito campus.
?I started it in 1979 just to get people to come to Santa Barbara,? Smelley recalled while speaking at Monday?s Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table press luncheon at Harry?s Plaza Cafe. ?Over the years, a lot of teams ? low-key Division 2 teams going to Division 1 ? came up to our meet and developed.?
But in recent years, Smelley struggled to find teams willing to participate. He said their reason was running on the hilly course would raise their times, hurt their overall performance and thus their national ranking.
?We kept hosting because there were teams that did benefit from being there. But the reality is performance matters; just winning matters,? a disappointed Smelley said ?So, we?re going with that reality, and I?m discontinuing the Westmont Invitational and going on to that thing of getting times and the rankings.?
In Smelley?s view, what happened with the Westmont Invitational is an example that college athletics has lost its way in the area of building character.
?We have higher SATs, greater records, nicer uniforms, got more money, got more blow, got more show, but we now we have to have an outside organization to say, ?We need to work on character,? ? he told the luncheon audience.
?So what has athletics become? How well can you perform? Get whomever you can to do the job and we?ll get these outside people to do the character stuff.
?In Santa Barbara we do a little better than that, but as a whole, when we look at it nationally, athletics reflecting the idea of performance without responsibility and that character has to be taught by somebody else not by being part of athletics, I think it?s a loss.?
Smelley added: ?It?s a loss to give up the Westmont Invitational but the realities are we will go on and do our part and show up and try to get in the rankings. Our team will try to make their goals… But I?m sad to see in this world that character is not the most important thing about athletics but winning and performance is. I want to reverse that back a little bit.?
