Penn’s newly built Ott Center serves as a ‘local community track’ for athletes

If stopping twice to walk isn’t ideal in distance running, then it’s safe to say David Ott’s foray into cross country began inauspiciously.

But as a freshman at La Salle College High School, Ott — who went on to compete at Penn — couldn’t have known how that day would change his life.

It put him on a path that began with self-discovery, included a blueprint for success, led to his wife, and ultimately ended with both of their names atop a $69.3 million, 73,000-square foot indoor track facility that they hope will change the lives of Philadelphia athletes.

“There was this opportunity for Jane and I to help reinvigorate track [in the city],” Ott said in a phone interview, “and give kids opportunities much like the opportunities track gave us.”

On Thursday night, the Public League indoor track season kicked off at the Jane and David Ott Center, which opened this month on Penn’s campus.

For Imhotep track coach Anthony Bishop, the facility is more than welcome.

“It’s definitely something that the city needed,” said Bishop, now in his sixth season coaching Imhotep’s boys’ and girls’ squads. “There was just a lot of positive energy in there … and I think it can broaden kids’ horizons.”

Bishop said his team typically practices within the halls of its Germantown campus. Many indoor track teams in the city do something similar.

Bishop sets up cones or tapes off distances to simulate lanes but said its hard to reproduce races with lanes, which can help runners plot tactics, such as when to cut inside to take the lead.

St. Joseph’s Prep track coach Curtis Cockenberg, who has coached at his alma mater for nearly 50 years, joked about his plan to build such a facility.

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“The city has needed something like this for a long time,” Cockenberg said. “That’s why I always said I was going to win the lottery, so I could build it.”

In a manner of speaking, Ott believes he found his winning ticket as a freshman at La Salle, from which he graduated in 1981.

Ott had dreams of baseball stardom and asked his homeroom proctor, Pat Devine, who also was the track coach, if the sport would help him get in shape for baseball season.

“So the next day I showed up in my K-Mart sneakers and my gym uniform, and Coach Devine and I ran two miles,” Ott said. “It was an absolutely miserable experience.”

But Devine was so encouraging that Ott stuck with the sport.

Success, however, came slowly and was hard-earned. Ott eventually won an individual Catholic League cross country championship and earned his way onto the team at Penn, where he met his wife, Jane, whose life was similarly altered by the sport.

Jane Ott, who also competed for the Quakers, grew up in Connecticut. Few in her family went to college, her husband said, so the little exposure to higher education she received was from high school track events held at Harvard.

“She always viewed it, like, ‘Oh, that’s not a school for kids like me,’” Ott said. “Then it became, ‘Hey, maybe someone like me could go to school like this.’

“Luckily, she didn’t go to Harvard because I wouldn’t have met her. But our hope and vision for this [facility] is that it is a local community track.”

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Bishop said he would be grateful to spend one day at the facility with his team, which won its first Pub team title last season. He also believes that his athletes spending time on a college campus could spark their own dreams.

In the meantime, though, don’t expect Bishop to wallow in what his team doesn’t have.

“The culture that I have built,” he said, “we’re just going to work hard. We already know that we’re the underdog in certain areas because we don’t have everything. But we’re not going to let that be our story.”

Cockenberg and the Prep will use the facility next week. By then, he said, he’ll have a better idea about his squad’s prospects this season.

David and Jane Ott also spent decades coaching high schoolers in Connecticut.

To this day, Ott, who made his career in investing, still credits Devine, for whom La Salle’s track is named, for his life’s trajectory.

Ott said his success with investing can be tied to his early track days, which forced him to work hard and persevere.

“I would say I’m Exhibit A in the impact that a coach can have on a person’s life,” said Ott, who also was the lead donor in naming La Salle’s track after Devine in 2018. “So I’ve been on both sides of it. It’s just been such a blessing to be able to coach and be there for the kids that way, too.”