I had plenty of time to think last night at EKU during the A & AAA regional prelims about the state of track & field and the state of our student athletes whom I believe are the best student athletes in the state. In looking at the state as a whole, we have appeared to spread our sport thin at the end of the school year. Outside of Northern Kentucky AAA and the Jefferson County AAA regionals, most regions have schools that have on their edges a minimum of two hour travel time to the regional sites and some more. Last night I believe our friends from Ashland, Boyd County, Greenup County and Green County had all planned on stopping at the all-night Shoney\'s buffet and to roll directly in to class this morning. Phone report from Pikeville had a lightning delay where Chuck Blank may have planned on the same heading back to Pineville.
We are involved with a great sport at the time of the year students are tied up in trying to finish graduation requirements, actually accommodating graduation and parental desires, finishing up the end of the school year, final exams, senior projects, Project Prom, Project Graduation, awards programs, band trips, and for multi-sport athletes district softball & baseball tournaments among many others.
In looking at the present format of regional preliminaries and finals in regards to next years state department requirements of not missing school without loss of funding, we may need to look at our present format and look back instead. Why? With the standards set by the KHSAA on regional entry deadlines and scratch/add deadlines two days before, last night at the EKU regional in the running events, in AAA we had 37 scratches out of 228 entries (about 15%) plus 9 out 102 relay entries (almost 10%). In Class A we had 44 scratches out 199 entries (over 20%) plus 12 of 86 relay (nearly 15%). Is it really worth having a day of preliminaries? In some events we had 3 of 8 runners in a heat actually compete while the next heat had 9 of 9.
In looking back, I am looking back to when I first started coaching at Paintsville and the track at Jenkins was the mecca of track facilities in the area. We drove up to Jenkins on a Saturday morning and ran preliminaries in the high hurdles, 100 & 200. During those we ran off the field events and then turned around and ran finals in all the running events. For years the Bellevue Invitational was the best prep meet for regional and state. They ran prelims in the morning and afternoon and came back with finals at night. If you were a very good athlete, you had the best work out of the year possibly running as many as eight races that day. What an interval work out!!!!
With the travel expenses schools are incurring due to budget cuts ( how greatful I am for my superintendents that footed the bill for the bus & fuel without having it come out of my track account all those years), is it really worth it to have two days of regional, especially considering no one can plan for this week until early to mid April (Plus we even had a couple of regionals change their date & time within the last two weeks.). Last year with the severe weather, many regions had to foot the bill for three days travel.
The stipulation from the KHSAA was to avoid graduation dates of schools. This year it was tough. If we continue, don\'t be surprised if some region has a graduation every day of the week one year. Then who gets the shaft?
I have been spoiled in the meets I have worked because in every case we have seeded the events at the starting line from a performance list with every lane filled except the last. Last night out of 90 heats, only three had a full flight of 9 competitors.
From a coaching point of view, running prelims on separate days leaves you open to the following: having a top athlete DQed for false start(happened last night), jewelry, uniform on a prelim date, having to work around relay name entries over a span of Monday thru Saturday in the midst of the busiest time of the year in school is not an easy task, let alone work around injury issues from having someone compete on a cool night without proper warming up.
This year with the availability of results on the internet, we had some questions about the validity of some entries. Some were clerical errors, others were contested in meets that were either not reported or I was unable to get posted to the website. The main concern in the regional is getting the best athletes to compete head to head. All of the invitationals I worked this year, did exactly that unless the coach did not enter a time for an athlete in which case they were relegated to the slow heats. A look at last night\'s results show some of the best athletes in the state competing with middle schoolers so that the best athletes could get to run against each other in the finals. Mission accomplished, but necessary?
Another point-it is tough getting good officials to work two days at the end of the season and then ask them to come back & work the two days of the state meet the next week. (plus some off those officials are working more than two days this week.) Spreading good referees around the state is also tough during the week. People need to take off work to travel to a weekday regional and then may have a long haul back home after the meet.
I don\'t know that having a one day meet would even require preliminaries. The top eight in the event going head to head based on entry times and the actual athletes who show up might work even in the 100.
Having a one day regional would:
1. Give everyone a day they can plan for the entire year.
2. Give school administration a date to avoid or plan around ( especially graduations).
3. Eliminate at least one extra day of travel expenses, and time away from home during some of the busiest student-athlete days of the year.
4. Head to head competition of the best in the region based on verifiable season performances.
5. An extra week to train (except for those who need to get a pole vault or other meet to get someone qualified for the regional!!!!) This would also open up the last weekend of the year for more competition. With a number of regional prelims on Monday, the attendance at the last weekend of the season invitationals has dropped off. Those that were well attended were in areas where the regionals are late in the following week.
6. Elimination of conflicts for multi-sport athletes (baseball, softball, track) with the district tournaments
7. Avoid the impending conflict with letting students out of school for athletic events without losing school funding.
Food for Thought! Take a look at this year\'s regionals and see if any athlete or team really benefitted from having a two day regional.
Frank Miklavcic
KTCCCA Executive Director
Kentucky USATF Executive Director
Asst. State Meet Director
www.ktccca.org