Due to a collision of simultaneous sporting events on the schedule, Bartlett High's campus in northeast Anchorage will be hit by a prep sports tsunami Saturday.
In the span of about seven hours, the school will host the Cook Inlet Conference cross-country running championships, the Bartlett-Chugiak swimming invitational, three flag football games and the homecoming varsity football game between the host Golden Bears and the West Eagles.
"There is no doubt it's going to be busy and there's going to be a lot of traffic," Bartlett principal Dan Gallego said Wednesday.
Gallego said about 15 volunteers will be used to direct traffic in the school's two parking lots. Any overflow parking will be directed to the nearby Alaska VA clinic, which is about a block away.
Cross-country running fans will be expected to park in the faculty parking lot near the Bartlett trails.
Recent changes on campus will also impact the race route. Past year's races utilized an area of campus that's now covered by a new baseball field, part of renovations that also added the school's new turf football field near the swimming pool. This year, Gallego said the cross-country races (there are open, junior varsity and varsity 5-kilometer races) will start and finish near the football practice field. Although the new baseball and football fields used a lot of area previously used for cross-country races, Gallego said there is still a large open area north of the baseball field that will be used for staging the races.
Swim meet director Audrey Burke said the invite start time was moved up to accommodate the day's busy schedule. She said swimmers will begin warming up in the pool (diving events are at Chugiak) at 6:30 a.m.
"It's a lot earlier than usual," she said.
Meet referee Gretchen Jennings said she's expecting 415 swimmers from 18 teams from around the state. There will also be about 60 divers at Chugiak.
"Bartlett will be a happenin' place," Jennings wrote in an email.
Burke said the swim portion of the meet should be done by around noon -- just in time to accommodate fans in the student parking lot arriving for the West vs. Bartlett varsity flag football game.
The afternoon's big events include the 1:40 p.m. varsity girls and 2:20 p.m. varsity boys CIC championship cross-country races and the 2 p.m. homecoming football game.
Gallego said Bartlett staff and administrators have been planning for the busy day for weeks, and he's confident everything will go according to schedule.
"When you recognize there are going to be those kinds of issues, we meet and make sure we run things as smooth as possible," he said. "And we anticipate everything is going to go really smoothly."
Contact Matt Tunseth at 257-4335 or mtunseth@alaskadispatch.com