Men’s head cross country coach Tom Rutledge doesn’t like refilling the hole he’s just dug. 

When plans for the new indoor practice facility dictated that Missouri Southern’s nationally ranked cross country course would have to be altered, Rutledge spent several months last summer measuring and remapping the course. A new finish line was also erected. 

Now, because of additions to the project, that finish line will be torn down and Rutledge will spend another summer rebuilding his course. 

“It was just a hard summer, it takes a lot of measuring, a lot of walking,” he said. “I don’t mind doing it, but I don’t like doing it a second time.”

After the initial plans for the indoor practice field were put in place, emerging issues with drainage required the addition of piping and a detention pond to catch the heavy watershed coming off the course. 

“I’ve been here 20 years and I could have told you that,” Rutledge said. “We’ve got pictures where [the course] looks like a lake.” 

Earthwork on the indoor practice project begins at the end of October and Bob Harrington, director of the physical plant said the new cross country course will be ready in time for the 2010 Southern Stampede. 

“We’re trying to do the earthwork so that we never have to move the cross country course again,” Harrington said. 

Rutledge will be working closely with Harrington and University officials to set the course hopefully, for the last time. 

“Bottom line is it has to be done. God never said life was going to be fair so that’s just how I try to look at it,” Rutledge said. “I hate digging a hole and then filling it back up, but I have to stay positive about it because there’s nothing I can do about it.”