GULF SHORES, Ala.  — The city gets the chance to show off its new $500,000 track at the Sportsplex this weekend as the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s 4A-6A state meet comes to town.

It will be a big sporting weekend in the city of Gulf Shores with two championship events with high school track athletes at Sportsplex and college volleyball teams on the city’s public beach.

The state 4A-6A track championship meet will be conducted on the newly resurfaced track, steeple chase and pole vault apparatus. Events start at 8:30 a.m. on Friday and 8 a.m. on Saturday. Awards will be presented Saturday afternoon at 4:30 p.m.

At the beach, the American Volleyball Coaches Association’s sand volleyball national championship will be decided for the second consecutive year in Gulf Shores. In 2012 Gulf Shores conducted the AVCA’s first national championship event. The city has the contract for the next two years as well.

Teams and pairs competition will begin on Friday with the team championship at 3:30 p.m. Saturday and the pairs championship Sunday afternoon.

In July the council OK’d $250,000 to $300,000 to resurface the track and sought bids. The three bids received by the city created confusion so in September Director of Recreation and Cultural Affairs Grant Brown recommended the city hire Ed Norton of Holcombe Norton Partners, a sports architect from Birmingham, to come up with specifications for the project, examine the bids and see the project through.

By the time there it was completed and ready for action, the cost topped $500,000. According to a memo to the City Council on April 15 “the project is funded with bond monies and was budgeted for $537,200.00. The change order will result in an overrun of $23,596.91.”

The final extra cost involved buying aluminum curbing to make the track compatible for both high school and track meets. The city is preparing a bid to play host to the NAIA national track championships for 2014.

“I got the call from the guy who was going to paint the lines and the question was do you want this striped for a high school event or a college event,” Brown said. “I said ‘What do you mean we can’t have them both?’

“He said you can’t paint for both. You have to have the raised curbing is the only way you can paint for college and run it for high schools. And he was about ready to start painting.”

Public Works Director Mark Acreman said curbing was one of two change orders necessary for the track.

“One was there same bad soils encountered under the extended pole vault area as well as the steeple chase and those materials had to be removed and replaced with sand,” he said. “And that’s about a $6,100 change order.

“The second one was a $10,200 addition for aluminum curbing that will give us the city the flexibility to host both high school and college level tournaments just by adding this. This is like a portable curb you put down on the outside of the lanes that you change lanes with so that you are compatible with both college and high schools.”

Acreman said the added flexibility the curbing allows will pay off in the future when the city adds college meets at the complex.

“That was an unforeseen purchase but I think it was definitely worth it,” he said.

The city also got a good deal on some pole vault equipment that was slated to be used at a meet in Birmingham.

“While we were doing this we have purchased a new pole vault pit with standards which is the pad and the uprights that you put the bar across,” Brown said. “It was a package deal that we were able to get. It’s an NCAA quality pit that they were going to use for an indoor track meet and they had no use to ship it back to New York where it came from. We negotiated a very good deal for the city to use this pit.

“They never used it and ended up shipping it down here to us so it saved us the shipping as well. It’s never been used and we paid 60 perce