The responsibility of hosting and planning events have become more difficult because of COVID-19 restrictions however, CWU is continuing to face those challenges head-on.

On April 16 and 17, Kevin Adkisson, head coach of the cross country and track and field team, hosted the Wildcat Invitational. After having a year-plus off from meets Adkisson said he was excited to bring people to compete at CWU.

Months prior to the Wildcat Invitational, Adkisson said he was organizing and scheduling the event, trying to find volunteers to help set up and manage stations. Even in a normal year orchestrating a track meet is troublesome but COVID-19 restrictions made it more difficult according to Adkisson. Everyone had to get tested and be free of COVID-19 along with the event keeping up with standard protocols: social distancing, face masks, venue size and sanitizing.

“We haven’t hosted many home meets,” Adkisson said. “Our home meets are usually mid-to-late season so there’s always some underlying anxiety I have with hosting the event until it’s done.”

The days leading up to the event, Adkisson said he felt confident that the invitational would run smoothly. However, on the day of the events there were some minor setbacks because of a few volunteers not showing up.

“We were scrambling a little bit with getting things organized, but that’s kinda expected,” Adkisson said. “Luckily we managed to get everything set in place so nothing would slow down or stall events.”

Adkisson said a major contribution to the success of the Wildcat Invitational was the help of CWU’s administration. He said the school played a key role in manning gates, making sure people couldn’t just walk in and double checking that participants weren’t infected. Without the assistance of administration the Wildcat Invitational wouldn’t have ran as nicely as it did, Adkisson said.