By Michael Newman

It was close to 1:00 AM last Sunday when I got home after a night after Benedictine University for the Midwest Distance Festival. It’s a meet that I am the meet director of. After having a late dinner with my kids who helped out, I dropped them off and drove around thinking about that night. The smiles that were on all of the athletes’ faces were etched in my mind.

When I started getting closer to my home, I started making a mental list of things that I needed to accomplish for the next couple of weeks. One thing that was a priority was writing about the Boys State Meet and sharing my feelings what had happened on that weekend. A coach at the Festival had asked if I was going to write about it. I said yes, but the organization of the Distance Festival was a high priority at that time.

Maybe it was the best thing for me. I drove back from Charleston after that meet with rage in my heart. I think if I would have written something that was full of venom, full of emotion that would have strayed from what had happened. The two week delay in writing this gave me a chance to think about what happened and reflect on that.

I am not a coach. I sometimes think that I am a track nut disguised as an editor for DyeStat. I think the passion for the sport shows at times. This may be one of those times.

I have been to so many Illinois State Track & Field Meets. I participated in one my senior year. Not my finest moment but one that I will always remember. I carry that memory with me when I cover the state meet. It is when things that happen to kids that hits me hard.

The IHSA does a great job in putting on this meet year after year.  The 2013 Boys State Meet this year was a meet where they stubbed their toe. Maybe not stubbed their toe, but broke their foot.

There will be times that a couple things may go wrong at a meet. At a state meet, it should not.

There were a number of athletes that were disqualified from their race because they did not report to the check-in tent on time. The most glaring of these happened to Zion Mason (Plainfield North HS, Plainfield) when he tried to check in for the 110 Meter Hurdles. He checked in right at the second call at 1:44 PM, seventeen minutes for the start of his race. The clerk that checked him in told Mason that he would be able to race and was told that he would be able to race. He was told to sit in the tent.

According to account that Mason’s coach Tony Holler wrote in itccca.com, the athletes were released to warm up for the race on the track. In the prelims, there is a break after the 4x1 relay and the 110 Hurdles. Mason had showed up right after that.

While Mason was sitting in the tent, an IHSA administrator entered the track and asked Mason to leave and that he was disqualified. According to Holler, the IHSA administrator told Mason “I am not going to argue with you.”

Holler goes into more detail about what happened with his athlete. It is something that should be read.

The same thing happened later in the day in the 3A meet for the 300 Meter Hurdles. A first call was made for the event, Jarvis Grace-Hill of York and Isaiah Michal of Edwardsville went to check in at the tent. The clerk told them at the tent they were late and they would not be able to compete in the event. The two coaches from the school approached an IHSA official that refused to listen to them.

On Saturday when the schedule was sped up (I’ll get to that in a minute), several athletes were late to the check in and not allowed to compete. It was understandable since no calls were made over the PA because the schedule was moving in hyper-drive. One athlete, Caleb Beck (Oswego HS, Oswego) showed up to the tent late for the 3200 Meter Run but was allowed to compete. Riley McInerney was almost done winning his race and roll call had already been taken for the race. Beck was allowed to run in the race which was “humane” for the IHSA to do on that day.

But why the two standards? Why was this not done during the day on Friday?

The kids that were not allowed to compete will have this in their gut for the rest of their lives. I talked to Jacob Meyer (University HS, Chicago) after he ran in the Midwest Distance Festival. He was not allowed to compete in the 3200 Meter Run on Saturday because he checked in “too late”. I asked him if he had gotten over that. Before I could finish my question, he replied “No. Absolutely not.” God forbid, what happens if Meyer never qualifies again for the state meet? Opportunity lost.

There has to be a protocol from here on out that cannot be blindly followed by either the officials that are working the meet of the coaches that have their athletes there in regards to checking in. It was obvious that there is a problem.

You have a giant scoreboard at O’Brien Stadium. If you have to speed the meet up, have an official that is in charge of posting that check ins are being accepted in an event. The people announcing are not IHSA officials. When the meet is in regular pace, state that you need to be checked x minutes before the scheduled start of the race. I do not know how long the IHSA needs to check athletes in, but make a set time. Do not have any calls for check in. If you are there before the time, then excellent.

One thing that the IHSA should implement is something that they do for the State Cross Country Meet. Make sure that any coach that has an athlete in the meet has to attend a coach’s meeting. For cross country, they do it the day before the meet and it is very effective. With the check in process that is used for that meet, there have been NO problems with athletes getting there on time. Why cannot this be used for the state track meet?

Have the Class A coaches attend a meeting on Wednesday afternoon. If they cannot attend that, have them attend a coach’s meeting 90 minutes before the state meet is supposed to start. It makes both the officials and coach accountable. On Thursday after the 1A prelims are complete, then have the meeting with the 2A / 3A coaches.

The meet is supposed to be about the kids being able to compete. The center of the attention should be the kids but sometimes it is the decision of the officials that takes center stage.

A good example is what happened during the state finals on Saturday. After they had finished the first sections of the 3200 Meter Run, it started to rain. I thought, wow, what a surprise. The weather that Illinois had experienced during the track season has been horrible. I think we could count on one hand the number of good days that the athletes had a chance to compete.

I went back to the press box to get my umbrella. I checked on my computer on weather.com to look at the radar around the area. I saw some green spots that were in the area but no “florescent” colors on that radar signifying dangerous weather. The weather site was projecting rain up to 2PM. I was thinking we were going to get wet for a little.

I entered the track by the finish line and I saw IHSA track administrator Ron McGraw on the radio. He was instructing the press box to announce that we would be going on a rolling schedule due to the approaching “bad” weather. The first thing I thought was “Oh boy, my busy day has just gotten busier.”

As the finals started, I started thinking about how the speeding up of the schedule would affect the athletes. The distance events would be hurt the most but other athletes that had trained all year for this moment would be thrown a HUGE curve ball.

O’Fallon would be affected the most. The Panthers had a great track season and had a chance to earn a team trophy. Part of that would have to do with the efforts of their distance duo of Patrick Perrier and Alex Riba. Both would be attempting to run the 3200 then come back in the 1600 later in the day. With the rolling schedule, the three hour gap that they had planned for was now only 90 minutes.

In talking to Perrier after the race, he told me that they had been in meets this year where the gap between the two events was not as close as it was for the state meet.

John Wold (Glenbard South HS, Glen Ellyn) was a prime example of how the schedule would have a negative effect. Wold has recently started training after a season of injuries. He would need the 90 minutes in between the 800 Meter Run and the 1600 Meter Run to recover. With this schedule, he would only have 40 minutes.

He won the 800 Meter Run setting a new 2A record in a downpour. He had little time. Wold approached me. I have talked to JZ a number of times during his high school career. He did not know what to do. He needed to go someplace dry so that he would be ready for his next race. The concern was that he would not get in trouble. He could not sit under the awards tent. It was overcrowded. With the speeding up of the schedule, the award ceremony process was backing up. He could not stand out in the rain.

One official that I know suggested that he could jog around the infield while waiting. It was a good idea, but he needed to get out of the stadium. While I was having the conversation, the official who was announcing the 2A awards interrupted me and said, “Well, then he would miss the award ceremony.” My insides wanted to say out loud, “What are you…an idiot? There is an athlete that wants to get ready for his next race.” I think that was the former athlete in me that was getting that reaction.

 I could see that in World’s eyes that he was already focused on the next race. They did the awards immediately which was a god send so that he could get out of the rain.

The thing is…it was a bout the officials and the ceremony announcing. Yes, the kids should be acknowledged for the awards but not to sacrifice an athlete’s chance in another event. O’Fallon and St. Ignatius did the right thing in sending athletes to the awards so that Jack Keelan, Riba, and Perrier could get ready for the 1600.

The IHSA made a knee jerk reaction in speeding the meet up. In every forecast for that day, they said that there was a chance of rain, the heaviest coming between 1 & 2 PM is what happened. I agree with them two years ago when they had to speed the meet up. Every different color was on that radar signifying that dangerous weather was on the way. It was dripping when they finished the mile relay at 2:30 PM, some three and a half hours after the finals had started. It was even more of a joke when it was announced that there would be no formal award ceremony for the team trophies. I looked to the south and to the west and the skies were starting to clear.

I went into the field house where the 3A Pole Vault and High Jump were taking place. It was necessary for that to happen because of the rain. I heard an announcement that the 1A & 2A awards were taking place. I looked out the window and the sun was out. I saw Jack Keelan in the Fieldhouse. I joked to him that he needed to warm up for the 1600. Look at it outside. We both smiled. He should have been warming up at that point. What was going to happen if the meet went on in the normal schedule? Was it that everyone would get wet? What was the difference? Every meet this year the weather had not been that great. Were we going to melt? Where was this bad weather…in Wyoming?

If the meet was kept on a normal schedule, I think we would have seen a different outcome in the team battles especially in 3A. Nothing against Providence Catholic and Pekin, but I think there would have been other schools that were depending on athletes for doubles/triples etc. that would have factored a little bit more. Instead we will go through the debate of whether the scoring should be changed for the state meet (I will get to that in a future Newms Notes. I do have an opinion on that).

The one thing that made my stomach turn the most once again came from the check-in tent from one of the clerks. At the end of the meet when the 4 x 400 Meter Relay was concluding, this clerk joked that we got the meet done 2 hours ahead of schedule.

Is it a joke that kids had to rush through a meet? Is it a joke that because the meet was fast tracked that they missed their check in time? It will be something that those kids on Saturday will remember for the rest of their lives. Maybe this clerk needs to take some sensitivity training. Maybe this clerk should not be allowed to volunteer to work this state meet again.

Maybe we should remember that it is not about the people who write the stories about the meet or the officials who run the meet. It should be about the performances that the kids achieved. It should be about Cahokia setting a scoring record in winning the 2A team title. Maybe it should be about the great distance doubles that Jack Keelan and Grant Nykaza achieved in their last state meet. Maybe it should be that Cole Henderson, only a junior, achieving what he achieved on that Saturday afternoon.

I drove not thinking of those things but thinking of the bad things that had happened. It may be a reminder that this meet is about the kids and not the adults that run it. Just like Tony Holler, I am not suggesting anarchy when it comes to the state meet. I do think it is time for an attitude adjustment.