Long night at track meet

Well the state qual's finally happened Thursday night and almost went into Friday morning. While very long, it was still a nice showing by local athletes. Three boys qualified and eight girls.

Here's the list:

Barry Franklin, Longwood: 3,200 (3rd place)

Chris Searles, Longwood: Shot Put (2nd place)

Bobby Andrews, SWR: 1,600 (3rd place)

Lauren McGrath, SWR: High Jump (2nd place)

Ashley Dell'Aira, SWR: Triple Jump (1st place)

Tori Hill, SWR: Pole Vault (2nd place)

Ashley Clasen, SWR: Shot Put (3rd place)

Brooke Johnson, SWR: 1,500 (3rd place) -Relay

Janet Mellor, Mt. Sinai: 300 (1st place)

Janie Turek, Mt. Sinai: 1,000 (2nd place)

Jennifer Johnston, Longwood: 600 (3rd place)

The way qualifying works, the top two finishers earn bids. Third-place finishers go if they meet the qualifying standard. The trick there is you don't necessarily have to meet the standard that night. As long as an athlete meets the mark at a sanctioned event after the start of January, that counts. For example, McGrath had jumped 5-04 earlier in the year, which beat the standard of 5-03. So had she finished third with a jump of 5-02, she still would have made it. It didn't matter anyway because she finished second. 

It's a good deal because it's harder for the athletes to perform their best at Suffolk West. Times on the track especially will always be less than the Armory for example where the track is better and athletes can wear spikes.

The meet had a few mishaps, most notably in the girls 4 x 800 relay. Every team ran one lap short. Not sure how that's possible, but the officials screwed up and were bringing the next girl out before the runner had completed the four laps. So Ward Melville won with a time of 8:57.12. Wow!

The meet didn't end until a few minutes before midnight, which is a major problem. There's no reason a high school sporting event, on a school night, should end that late. The meet didn't start until 7 p.m., which was an hour later than it was originally scheduled for on Tuesday. Bad weather forced the meet to be postponed, so there were few options for rescheduling it. It couldn't start until 7 because the Suffolk basketball team had practice before it. If the meet was at a later date, kids would potentially miss it because schools are on break and kids have vacations scheduled.

Anyhow, Section XI needed to find a way to work with Suffolk West to make the field house available at an earlier hour. Start the thing at 3 p.m., let the kids out of school early and tell the basketball team to find another court to practice on. I'm sure there are plenty of basketball courts in the world.

These high school kids are forced to get up around 6-6:30 a.m. to go to school and then for some have to wait around until 11 p.m. to compete in their event. How fresh can a kid be that late? And how the heck can they be expected to get up at 6-6:30 a.m. again the next morning to go to school again?

I only watched the meet and I couldn't get up until 10 this morning...