SAN DIEGO -- Students, teachers and alumni will gather at Sweetwater High School on Friday to begin raising $25,000 for a new track.

Olympian Gail Devers challenged the school to raise the money to add to the hundreds of thousands of dollars she has already arranged to have pledged from corporate sponsors. The new $1.2 million track is expected to be ready for the spring 2005 track season.

The Gail Devers Olympic Torch Relay Marathon begins at the high school track at 3:30 p.m. and is scheduled to continue through 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

During the fundraising event, participants will take turns running a torch around the track for an hour at a time.

The event is timed to fall on the day Devers is running in the 100 meter track event in Athens. She is competing in her fifth Olympics.

Devers graduated from Sweetwater High in 1984 but no longer lives in the area. In May, she visited Sweetwater to announce her plan for a new track.