How American Athletic Track and Turf leverages decades of experience, laser-controlled technology, and its highly skilled team to build elite athletic facilities
American Athletic Track and Turf (American Athletic) is a national award-winning athletic facility construction company with a proud legacy of delivering premier running tracks, artificial turf fields, tennis courts, and other facilities along the East Coast. Founded in 1983 by Bill Narozanick, the business has its origins in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Bill worked at his father’s various businesses. At those businesses, which included an asphalt supply company, a stone quarry, and a road construction business that paved local highways, interstates, and heavy civil projects in the Mid-Atlantic, Bill earned a thorough education in construction and asphalt paving. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until he attended Florida State University, where he competed on the track team and had the opportunity to see a state-of-the-art track being built, that he saw a way to combine his expertise in construction and passion for athletics. After graduating, Bill returned to his father’s business for several years. However, when the company was sold, he set out to create his own business in the athletic facility construction sector, leading to the incorporation of American Athletic in 1983.
Over the decades, the company flourished under Bill’s leadership but since 2019, he has stepped back into an oversight role, leaving the day-to-day management of the business to Al Buciorelli, President and CEO. Al is just one of American Athletic’s success stories, climbing every rung of the ladder from field laborer and operator to estimator and project manager, to COO and, as of this spring, CEO. Al is one of the longest-tenured members of the team, working there since 1992, and he has helped guide the company alongside Bill as it grew into one of the most vertically integrated sports construction businesses in the industry. Today, Al leads by Bill’s guiding principle of “Seek perfection, accept nothing less than excellence”. He is joined by Liam Narozanick, who recently rejoined the company as Vice President after working in finance, to detail the organization’s history, evolution, and expertise in the construction industry.
Pivotal partnerships
Since its early days, American Athletic has come a long way and grown through several key partnerships, as Liam explains. “Initially, Bill was focused on smaller facilities, including parking lots, running tracks, and athletic fields. By aggressively pursuing the sports facility market, he positioned American Athletic for the larger public bid market. Eventually, Bill realized he could carve a successful niche by being vertically integrated, allowing him to win larger, more sophisticated athletic facilities. In the late 1980s, he won his first state-of-the-art track job. From there, American Athletic’s expansion into running tracks took off and, after partnering with Southwest Recreational Industries, Inc., the largest track surfacing business in the US at the time, Bill and American Athletic quickly became their go-to paving partner. This empowered the company to grow into one of the largest running track construction and repair companies on the East Coast.
“Then, in 2004, Southwest Recreational filed for bankruptcy. Out of that bankruptcy emerged Beynon Sports Surfaces (Beynon), which today is one of the world’s largest suppliers and installers of polyurethane track surfaces, for whom we were and are incredibly proud to have been their first authorized installer. After Beynon achieved significant success in the mid-2000s, it was acquired by Tarkett Group, a global, billion-dollar flooring solutions business that could continue supporting its growth. Recognizing the strength of the Beynon team and the high-quality product they made, American Athletic has cultivated the relationship to this day, working hand-in-hand with Beynon, FieldTurf (another Tarkett subsidiary), the broader Tarkett team, and Gezolan (a key independent supplier of track surface granules), on hundreds of projects. With that key partnership in hand, American Athletic began further expanding in its Mid-Atlantic and Florida markets, while occasionally taking on projects in New York and Virginia, where it has continued to grow to this day,” he elaborates.
Extensive experience
In addition to these key partnerships, American Athletic’s continued success can be attributed to the quality of its operations. “Today, we stand out as one of, if not the only, vertically integrated athletic facility installers on the East Coast. While many of our competitors focus on just one component of construction, such as surfacing, or specialize in a single sport, like tennis, we handle everything from the earthwork, drainage, sub-base, and paving to surfacing for athletic fields, multi-sport courts, and polyurethane running track systems, and are now expanding further into other types of facilities such as municipal cricket fields and parks. Synthetic turf field construction has also become a large part of our core operations; we prepare a turnkey surface, allowing FieldTurf to quickly install the turf and move to their next job,” Liam continues.
That vertical integration is one of American Athletic’s greatest strengths, enhancing its capabilities and providing distinct advantages to its clients. “Being vertically integrated allows us to perform nearly 100 percent of the work on a project, thereby enabling us to achieve greater quality control from start to finish. It also helps us better manage scheduling with less reliance on subcontractors, whose quality and timeliness can be unpredictable. As a result, we can take on a larger volume of work while maintaining quality and timing, which ultimately sets our work apart from others in the industry,” says Al.
“Based in the Mid-Atlantic, we take on projects in New York and New England, where timing is incredibly tight because the work must be completed during warm weather. This creates a narrow construction window and any delays, such as a subcontractor being unavailable for a few weeks, could set us back significantly. A delay could push a project into the next fiscal year or cause a missed deadline for an important athletic event, especially with schools starting at the end of summer. Our vertical integration helps us meet these tight timelines and complete projects as soon as the construction season opens,” Liam adds.
But vertical integration is challenging, and not just any firm can make it work. The reason American Athletic’s operations have been so successful are due to two critical factors: its incredible team and mastery of available technology. American Athletic’s team is comprised of true veterans mixed in with new blood. Most of its field leadership, including Mark Crislip, Mike Hughes, and Randy Patrick, among others, have worked there for 20 to over 30 years, learning directly from Bill and compounding his expertise with their own. Inside the office, Al and Lee Narozanick have supported AACI for more than 30 years, transitioning from the field to internal leadership roles. Meanwhile, Philip and Mary Narozanick have been there for nearly a decade, learning from the senior management, improving processes, and filling critical roles in American Athletic’s day-to-day accounting and administrative processes. Together, the team is possibly unmatched in the industry, with countless projects and hundreds of years of combined experience directed towards growing the business efficiently as it adds new crews, territories, and services.
The management team also strives to create a family-like atmosphere and ensure good opportunities for its employees, whether that is through highly attractive
wages or regular office events. This has resulted in a unique environment where different generations of the same family and close friends are employed at American Athletic. Multiple employees have seen their sons, siblings, cousins, or close friends join the team and remain there for years. Without these employees, American Athletic would not have achieved anywhere near the level of success it currently has.
State-of-the-art technology
The second driver of American Athletic’s vertically integrated success has been its ability to leverage cutting-edge technologies within its processes. “We use state-of-the-art, laser-controlled grading and paving equipment, and advanced techniques, as well as sophisticated polyurethane mixing and installation equipment imported from Germany. The laser technology was implemented in the late 1990s to the early 2000s as a means of achieving greater control and better precision and has since become an integral part of our operations. Always striving to stay on the leading edge, we continue to look for the latest advancements in laser technology and equip our machinery with tools to guide tolerances and quality. For a real-life example, the tolerances required for paving a running track are far more rigorous than those for an interstate highway. While highway paving might have a slope tolerance of half an inch, the tolerance for a certified running track is just an eighth of an inch over ten feet. These stringent standards are required for completing certified track facilities, and using state-of-the-art technology allows us to achieve this precision far more consistently. We take great pride in being industry leaders and have spearheaded the adoption and implementation of these technologies before many others in the field,” Al concludes. “This enables us to continue our vision and mission of providing the highest quality athletic facilities possible, ensuring taxpayers and local communities get the best value for their hard-earned money.”
Through its commitment to quality, innovation, and process optimization, American Athletic has established itself as perhaps the leading sports construction entity on the East Coast, completing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of facilities for prestigious customers including NCAA universities, professional sports teams, the US Military, local boards of education and municipalities, and more.