Somewhere high school track and field went off the reservation. Follow me here to the reality that an invitational track meet with a large field and heats can run five to six hours. That's understandable.
Now this old man yelling get off my front porch ran in large high school invitationals that would take three to four hours. That's before our nation pulled its collective head out of its posterior and started inviting girls. But even then I can remember going to a league meet in the late 70's that took three hours.
We don't need 17 heats of the boys and girls 200. A large invitational meet should be for VARSITY runners. Not just every high school kid who wants to run. It's not fan friendly and yes, fans do attend even if they don't have a kid out there in spikes.
Yes, we need junior varsity meets. We had three a year when I was in high school. That's it. Running a varsity meet was a privilege. But those JV athletes don't need to be at big meets. Hold a few tri's or quad's and maybe one big JV invitational.
If you want to invite 20 to 25 schools to run your meet, either limit the entries or as World Athletics has figured out, limit the events. No one school should have eight athletes in a single event which I saw last weekend. That's ridiculous.
Meets need to be kept to a manageable five hours for the sake of the kids and the sake of the parents and just as importantly, the sake of the officials.
Florida has a long enough season and more than enough meets to make this work. It just takes a lot of communication and cooperation between the coaches and the state federation that rules the sport.
Some athletes who make it all the way through the state series end of running more than 12 meets not counting the new indoor season that's been added. Ten meets is plenty for a season. I challenge the coaches and administrators to figure this out. But I'm a realist, the money from all those schools is too attractive to show some discipline and hold five hour meets.
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