photo by: Nick Henthorn

Competitors compete in the 100-meter hurdles during the 2025 Dick Dei Track Classic. The 2026 meet is set for Saturday at Wheeling Park High School.

WHEELING — It’s a tad premature, but with a big milestone coming up, history was on Sean Dei’s mind.

“The first meet was in 1978, 2016 was a snowout, and 2020 was canceled because of COVID So we need to go back and look at those numbers, but we’re pushing the magical number of 50,” Dei said. “And I’ve talked to some of the people from the Shadyside [Relays], they’ve passed that 50-year mark and it’s really a great accomplishment because it shows a lot of work.

“We’ve talked about that; we feel that we’re the custodians of it. It’s not about us. We’ve been handed the baton to carry on what a lot of people that are no longer with us, what they started and what they built, and to continue to make it better. But most importantly, like we say, it’s all about the student athletes here on Saturday.”

One shy of the big 5-0, the 49th Annual Dick Dei Track Classic is set for this Saturday at Wheeling Park High School. The longstanding meet will once again bring in teams from far and wide for a full day of high-caliber competition. The meet will kick off with field events starting at 9:45 a.m.

“Right now we have 17 teams, no Pennsylvania teams this year,” Dei said. “It’s because Pennsylvania throws the javelin and they triple jump, so a lot of the compatibility of the events really doesn’t line up with the Pennsylvania team. As of last night, we are looking at 10 Ohio teams, seven West Virginia teams. That’s coming from here in the northern panhandle, the Parkersburg area, along with the eastern panhandle, and then a spread of the teams throughout Ohio– Cleveland, all the way down to the Cincinnati area. So that’s a pretty nice spread that we have.

“I think that competition-wise, with Olentangy Liberty coming, they have always had very good athletes. They compete very well in track at the Division I level in Ohio. Not only with the men, but their other sports, they’ve been successful. A lot of those athletes come over and are on the track team. They have a very good culture. The schools from Dayton, they’re always competitive for being smaller schools. They do not back down from competition.”

Sean Dei, the son of legendary Wheeling Park track coach Dick Dei– the meet’s namesake since 2004– also noted the local teams that will participate Saturday. The host Wheeling Park Patriots, Brooke, Martins Ferry, Madonna, Linsly and Shadyside among them.

“I know Andy Fletcher and Zach Phillips, the men’s and women’s coaches at Wheeling Park, are always excited to see who’s coming to the meet. That goes for some of the other local teams too, because for some, this might be the best competition they get beyond the state meet. Hopefully this gets them ready for May and June, and for our West Virginia schools, gets them ready for May as their season also concludes.

“And that’s one of the things– talking to the coach at Spring Mills over in Eastern Panhandle, he really likes coming here because of the way that we treat the kids, but also he, Matt Smith, says we will never see these schools again. I think that’s a good thing that once they leave here on Saturday, they won’t see them again until next year. That’s always a neat thing here. But also, as we get older, it’s the friendships that we make. It doesn’t matter what name’s on your sweatshirt. It’s the friendships and the bonds you make with people. And our family and a lot of others have truly made lifelong friends through this track meet.”

The meet has certainly become an institution in its time with a long and colorful history, and Dei noted that a website, DickDeiTrackClassic.com, is now up and running, with meet records, champion history and previous meet results all available.

“It just went live in the last month, and there’s a lot of history up there dating back from the very first meet from 1978 to 2025, and a lot of great information,” Dei said. “And there’s some more things we’re still going to add.

“I think one of the things as we look at the history of our meet, we’ve had a rich legacy build here as we go through. And that’s what was neat about the website is I was able to extract the results prior to all the electronic age through the Ohio County Library website, since they digitized everything. We’ve had athletes that have gone on to the Olympic trials early on in the meet. We’ve had young ladies that have gone on also to the Olympic trials. There’s all kinds of things that are very unique– when I was a sophomore, we didn’t really remember and didn’t hear much about it because there wasn’t much internet publicity, but in 1993, from Walsh Jesuit in the Akron Canton area, an athlete by the name of Mike Vrabel, who’s the current coach of the New England Patriots, won the discus at the track meet. So it’s kind of neat when you look back and see some of the talent that has come in and out of not only our meet, but if you look at the history of the Bellaire Relays, the Shadyside Relays, a lot of talent that’s come in and out of these meets in the Ohio Valley. It’s pretty neat.”

Dei said when it comes to the Dick Dei Track Classic, it takes a village to pull it off each year.

“It’s a lot of moving parts, and we’re very fortunate that the support from Dr. [Kim] Miller, Mr. [Rick] Jones, the assistant superintendent, Miss [Meredith] Daler, the principal, along with Chris Daugherty, the athletic director. And Doc actually ran on my father’s 1988 state championship team, so the program, and he also coached the program for a while and won a state championship before my dad passed away. So, the program and the meet’s been pretty close to him.

“Having that support is a lot. And in our committee is my brother Todd, myself, Ron White, Jeff Turner’s our meet referee, Dirk Fitch, who is retired from Ohio, and other individuals that contribute quite a bit that provide a lot of insight and feedback for us to really improve the meet. We want to look at it from an educational perspective where the young men and young ladies come in, make this an extension of the classroom. But we also look at it more in business concepts– those of us that work in corporate America– how we can use improvement tools and evaluate on how to continuously get better and evaluate what we have.”