State track championships land Clovis $2.6 million

A run on hotels, elastic bandages, gasoline and carbohydrate-rich pasta last weekend filled the coffers of local merchants with millions of dollars.

That bounty was thanks to the thousands of people who trekked to Clovis’ Buchanan High School on Friday and Saturday for the state high school track meet.

Thirty hotels in Fresno, Clovis and Madera filled up with track officials — who began arriving Wednesday — and athletes, parents and coaches from across the state Thursday.

Shawn Miller, business development manager for the city of Clovis, estimates local merchants took in about $2.6 million over the two-day California Interscholastic Federation State Track & Field Meet.

Fresno hotel and restaurant owners, meanwhile, made about $700,000 from meet visitors, said Layla Forstedt, director of marketing sales for the Fresno Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Revenue information was not available Monday from Madera officials.

Total attendance at the two-day event was about 17,660, meet officials said.

Over the weekend, Miller talked to merchants within a two-mile radius of Buchanan High.

“There was an overwhelming number of out-of-town people buying gas, snacks and sundries,” Miller said. “Parents are always forgetting something, like batteries for their cameras. [Elastic] bandages were another hot item.”

Fast-food restaurants around Herndon and Clovis avenues and Willow and Nees avenues were “bang-up busy,” Miller said.

Runners like to carbo-load before a race, said Brian Weaver, head track coach at Buchanan and assistant meet director, so Italian restaurants in Old Town Clovis likely had a lot of hungry young customers.

“We did get some out-of-town customers,” said Vittorio DiCicco, a manager at DiCicco’s restaurant on Clovis Avenue. “It was nice to see new faces.” Some of the new customers were from Southern California, he said.

But track fans were on their own to find food, because the meet’s handbook didn’t list nearby eateries, said Roger Oraze, the other assistant meet director.

That’s something organizers will correct next year, he said.

Oraze got an e-mail Monday from an Oakland man who attended the meet, suggesting a list of local restaurants open until 11 p.m. because some events Friday ran until after 10 p.m.

“That’s a good idea,” Oraze said. “We did well listing hotels in the handbook, but we didn’t list restaurants. We’ll work with the Fresno Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to do that next year.”

This is the first year the Clovis Unified School District has hosted the annual state track meet. The district has a contract with the CIF to hold the meet at Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan through 2011.