The world of HS track gets pissed off

Story is fine. Probably went too far when he compared it to frisbee golf. But otherwise, he's right on. Track is NOT the competitive sport that football is on the high school level. Hell, most kids in the schools around here join the track team so they can get out of school several hours a week, plus travel to district and state. I shit you not. They don't care if they win or lose. They just want to get out of class.

One more thing, track sucks. Field sucks, too.

 

Marking folks off my Christmas card list at a rapid pace.

Ball sports, other than soccer, suck.

 

When I wasn't covering a runner in the event, I loved the 3200, since I could check to see if I was missing any agate (in that day, reporters were given a result sheet for each event and we had to pass it around), or, having caught up, go grab interviews.

At my first stop, my optometrist, who had run in Div. II, coached the distance runners until his practice got too demanding to do both. We usually ended up spending half of my appointments talking track.

EDIT: I was at a weekly owned by the daily in the next town over, so now and then I'd feed them stories. My first year, one distance runner went to state and I didn't go. But the day before trials, the optometrist called and asked "(HanSen), what's that number you gave me for the Podunk Fishwrap to call in results?" Changed physicians a couple of times during my stay there, but never the optometrist, and not just because he took the company vision plan.

 

When I was in newspapers, it seemed the girls golf coaching position -- not a track job -- was the springtime landing spot for the head football coach.

 

I remembered wrong. I either mixed up the boys' 400 or girls' 300 hurdles. I typed that from home. If I'd been here at work, I could have looked up the lists I have.

On the other hand, some records will never be broken. The big-school boys' record in long jump is 24-4, which was set in 1940.

 

Yeah, 48 or 49 is about right for a good boys sprinter in the 400.

Love seeing those longstanding records. I think the oldest one in my state is from the mid-70s.
Our state athletic association been doing track for as long as it's been around. Since the early 1920s. Last year was the first time anyone had clocked an official time of under 21 seconds in the 200 (at least in the state meet, which is considered the state record).

 

I gotta say, I always loved covering HS invitationals during the regular season. Get 30-40 schools in there and it's like a three-ring circus.

My old college has one of the big Saturday invitationals each year, and the baseball team is usually playing a home doubleheader in the midst of it (the field events are held right across the street from the infield). That is one fun day.

 

I look at it as what do my readers care about? Around here, football is no 1 by 5,000 miles. Talking season vs season, baseball and softball are way ahead, too. We have some outstanding softball teams in our area.

Track is fine, but I find actually covering it in person generally pointless unless you're there to do a feature. I remember covering one meet years ago where 3 kids (2 who became first-round NFL draft picks) that were going on to D1 football decided to run the 4 by 100 relay just to "stay in football shape." They were totally dominant. That was neat. I went to that meet just cause all the athletes and coaches were in the same place.

I'm sure I'll have dissenters, but covering a track meet from a "gamer" standpoint, what can't I get that I can't just access via online results with a story and agate? Everything's posted online now. Someone ran the fastest and jumped the highest. The end. If records were broken, I make a couple phone calls.

 

Exactly. Nobody gives a shit about it. You're readers don't care. You're wasting man hours and space by devoting anything other than a photo and a basic write-up and/or agate. Features are all track is worth.

 

Ha.

Track's become the glorified "football conditioning sport" for FB players, which is why the "2 sport athlete" stuff that everybody touts is a little bunk when it comes to track.

 

Going to a dual meet, even rivalry meets, have been a waste of time in most places I've worked. Most of the time, they just aren't taken seriously.

Say 4-6 weeks before the state meet is when things get serious. In most sections, there's a Top 8 meet or Meet of Champions that draws athletes with the top marks/times in the region, a sort of prelude to upcoming league/regional/sectional meets where qualifiers for state are determined.

 

The KHSAA canceled the final events -- the 1,600 relay -- in the 3A state meet Saturday night, with no plans to finish the meet. Coaches across the state are understandably pissed, because there was no contingency plan in place and because of the lack of communication from the governing body.

Storms hit Lexington around 9:30, and they canceled it just over an hour later -- even as the worst of the storm had moved out of the area. The boys' team title, though it would have taken a lot for Team B to overtake Team A, was still up in the air. Team A had a six-point lead going into the 4 by 400.

One Lexington school offered to host the completion tonight, but couldn't get a response from the KHSAA. Now, they're shooting to do it Saturday, when the state elementary school championships are held.

In all my years of covering the state track meet, I have never witnessed anything like this happen. I get that the safety of the kids was paramount, but they needed to have a backup plan just in case. Hell, the 2A meet Friday night was completed while it was lightning around the stadium. Just bizarre all the way around.