Spring Valley High School has long been a recognized power in South Carolina Track & Field. The tradition began in the mid-1970's under Mike Bozeman, who went on to become the head Track & Field coach at Virginia Military Institute for 23 years. Spring Valley experienced success individually and as a team and eventually started the event that became the All American Track Classic. The way that the event started and grew to its current status makes for an interesting, and at times, an unlikely story.
John Jones, an accomplished hurdler from West Point and Rick Crumpler, Spring Valley’s assistant football coach, continued to build on Mike Bozeman’s team. As the success of their teams grew, they started looking for opportunities to compete on a bigger stage than just in South Carolina. On these trips they had many chances to talk and dream about the possibility of having a major multi-state meet closer to home.
It was in the fall of 1990 that the first seeds of the All American Track Classic were sown. Spring Valley’s Principal, Dr. Ben Nesbit, through much cajoling, convinced the school district to replace the clay track at Harry Parone Stadium with an all-weather track. With this facility improvement, John decided that Spring Valley would host an invitational in the spring of 1991.
The first edition was held as the Spring Valley Track & Field Classic in the spring of 1991, with thirteen teams (all from South Carolina) in attendance. Norman Greene, from Sumter, ran 13.80 in the 110 high hurdles; the record still stands. The second and third years were characterized by a growing number of teams, including those from outside SC, and late nights preparing. A second long jump pit was installed in 1992 on the Thursday before the meet, under the stadium lights. Entries were compiled by hand and involved manually collating, stapling and copying.
In the fall of 1993, Kevin Shaw was hired as a science teacher at Spring Valley. He had some experience in track and was an avid runner who began helping with the team. While in Syracuse, NY, at the National Scholastic Indoor Championships, John and his staff became aware of HyTek’s Meet Manager, which they acquired to remove the tedium of creating heat sheets.
The meet continued to grow in prestige and attendance over the next few years. Teams from out of state continued to attend along with the top teams from South Carolina. In 1998, events on Friday night were added to accommodate the growth.
Starting in 2000, Mr. Fred Kotoske, the owner of the local Taco Bell Restaurants, became the title sponsor and the meet was renamed the Taco Bell Track Classic. In 2001 the National Scholastic Sports Foundation selected the then Taco Bell Track Classic to be one of their NSSF Select Meets for that season. This was a new program by the NSSF, and the Taco Bell Track Classic was much honored to be one of the original NSSF Select Meets. In 2003-4, technological improvements such as FinishLynx and FieldLynx allowed us to do quickly and effortlessly what used to take countless hours to accomplish.
After the 2016 meet Fred sold his local Taco Bell franchises. Starting with the 2017 meet, Bojangles became the primary meet sponsor. In 2018 John Jones retired from full time teaching, although he continued as meet director. Unfortunately the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Bojangles era were canceled due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Starting in 2022, the meet was rebranded to simply the All American Track Classic. With the rebrand came a new event – javelin, which had been added by the South Carolina High School League as an event in 2021. John Jones retired after the 2022 meet, passing the reins to Spring Valley Head Coach Matt Oberly and former assistant and longtime announcer Paul Lockwood. Unfortunately, the 2023 meet was canceled due to 3.5” of rain from Friday at noon through Saturday, with highs in the 40’s.
The 2024 edition had fully live track results online and via a scoreboard at the finish line. This was a huge step up in providing in the moment results to spectators in the stands. To celebrate the 30th edition of the oft-renamed meet, there was a celebratory luncheon with a reunion of the original meet staff in 2025. This was also the first year the meet was streamed live on runnerspace.
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.