‘It will make for great racing’: The Course Spokane Valley set for debut this weekend during WCC cross country championships

Given a 46-acre canvas and commissioned to paint a beautiful landscape that could also stand the pounding of anywhere from 100 to 10,000 spiked feet in a day, Thomas Sherry initially leaned into the practical more than the artistic.

For instance, how to irrigate it.

“And then we found there was no water on the site,” Sherry said.

Turns out adjusting on the run is as much a part of the design and construction of a cross-country course as it is in the actual racing to come. And so it went in the year-long odyssey of building the Course Spokane Valley, plotted along Flora Road east of Sullivan just north of the Spokane River. It opens for competition on Saturday when the runners of Gonzaga, Washington State and the rest of the West Coast Conference gather for their annual championships.

It’s the layout’s soft launch – the WCCs and the NWAC championships for community colleges being the only 2025 events scheduled in advance of the 2026 grand opening. The $7 million project’s second phase, once funding is secured, will include additional amenities at the venue, such as a fieldhouse, more restrooms, enhanced parking, a food truck court for concessions, and crow’s nest for event announcements.

But this first finish line is being lauded for both the spirit of collaboration that characterized the endeavor and the result.

“There’s nothing like it in the two Western time zones,” said Gonzaga men’s coach Pat Tyson. “It’s beautiful, it’s great for spectators and it’s fair for the runners. It will make for great racing.”

Which, competitively, is the point. To reach it, Sherry – a principal at Spokane’s SPVV Landscape Architects who has more than 40 years in the field – polled coaches, runners and the people at Spokane Sports, partners in the project with the City of Spokane Valley, for a wish list. What aspects of other facilities of this ilk “made them great?” he asked. Cross-country-specific venues, mostly on-campus, were sampled – the LaVern Gibson course at Indiana State, Apalachee Regional Park near Florida State and Oklahoma State’s Greiner Family course among them.

“The big want was a course that was fast and firm,” said Sherry. “Nobody wants soft and muddy. They want a turf that can be maintained, that’s relatively short and not catching spikes and can handle the weather so when the sky opens up, it’s not going to turn to soup.

“The variety of terrain was less important to them that I thought it would be. This course does have elevation change, but there’s nothing super steep, and there are gentler radius turns so you can take them on and not lose your pace.”

In terms of hilliness, some of the degree of difficulty took a hit when it was learned that an adjacent sliver of 16 acres owned by the state and lining the river could not be accessed for the running layout. The original design would have sent runners within about 50 feet of the river; Sherry noted the strip will still be accessible to the public.

“It was for environmental reasons,” said Spokane Sports CEO Ashley Blake, “but that was a shift we made very early in the project, and even though you’re not right down on the river the uniqueness of the property and terrain is still substantial.” And, in a couple of respects, the adjustment resulted in other rewards.

Tyson has taken runners to meets at all the crosssport-specific venues, from the moderately difficult to the more extreme. He thinks the Spokane Valley course will be “more fair” than several he’s seen, including the site for this year’s NCAA championships, the Gans Creek course in Columbia, Missouri.

“We went there to do early season rehearsals and our starting box was on the left side,” he said, “and there’s a left turn after 600 meters. The start is slightly downhill, so everybody is flying and suddenly has to converge. It becomes a mosh pit, the I-5 corridor, and if you’re on the inside it’s easy to get boxed in. Our start is closer to 600-800 meters, it’s flatter, the right turn is more gradual. There shouldn’t be as much gridlock.”

Likewise, the lack of any onerous hills “just makes it a little friendlier to the runner,” Tyson said.

“If you’re running the NCAA regional here, it’s the first 10K race of the season, and then you only have seven days to turn around and do it again at nationals. It’s going to help runners recover a little better.”

Those regional and national meets are already in the offing. On the high school level, the Nike Bob Firman Invitational in September 2026 and the Nike Cross Northwest Regionals in November will bring a combined 20,000 runners to town. The NCAA Division III West Regional will be run a week before the Nike Cross, and the Division I regional is due in 2027. And, naturally, there are bids in the works for NCAA nationals.

It will take a couple of years, then, for the competitive reputation of the Course Spokane Valley to take shape. What’s been established is the bar for collaboration set by the city, Spokane Sports, the architects and Walker Construction – and the worthiness of what Blake called “a progressive design build.”

The water issue was no blip, but it was solvable – though it took digging beneath the Union Pacific tracks north of the site to access a line that services Central Premix. Boulders on the property have been incorporated into the course itself as kilometer markers and vehicle barriers, and more than 800 small trees were thinned for space concerns as well as the health of bigger trees. When the designer and builder needed to pivot, they did.

“I was skeptical in the beginning of the progressive design process,” Sherry admitted, “but I was rapidly converted. Traditional design build is so rigid that I don’t think we could have gotten the project done without that flexibility.”

Sherry has experience working on the original Plantes Ferry sports complex, and on the Centennial Trail. He has no problem calling the Course Spokane Valley “a legacy project.”

“At the end of almost every project there’s a disillusionment phase when you just want it done,” he said. “We never got there. We’re all still friends. I’ve just never had a project of this scale go so smoothly.”

The Course, a new cross country running park in Spokane Valley, is ready for its first event this weekend, the WCC men’s and women’s cross country championships. The grass on the running course is still maturing and will offer routes from 5K to 10K. There are paved trails for pedestrians and handicapped access to watch races.