Dear dimwit on the phone

The city our paper's in hosted the regional track meet last week. Top four in each event advance to state.
One of the local entries moving on is the in-town Catholic school's boys 4x100 team, which took fourth.
Although they had a pretty good lane in the finals (No. 6), getting to state was still a big surprise to all involved. Talked to all four afterward, and one of their comments was that they were more excited about their time than actually getting to state.
Ended up using quotes from two of the runners.
However, an unnamed guy called to complain the next day because I didn't lead off the regional story with the relay taking fourth.
He thought that should have been ahead of the girl who took second in the 1,600 and ran a meet record in the 3,200, or the girl who won the 300 hurdles (Ohio is one of those states) in a school-record time, or the girl who ended second in the long jump with a school-record leap.
His reasoning?
Nothing sexist.
No, he thought the relay boys state berth should have led off the story because that group attends the in-town school while aforementioned girls each attend a separate school in other nearby towns.

 

The top four in Ohio make it? I think I'd like that setup a lot better than what we have, where the top from each event plus the next 10 from across the state qualify for the state meet. There are no prelims anymore, either. It's three heats featuring at least 24 runners/teams in "finals."

 

Dear Track Mom:

Thanks for your completely inaccurate e-mail.

There was plenty of coverage of state track, in print and online. There was also live coverage via multiple platforms and accounts.

Since there was no mention of your daughter or her team, you said we had "no coverage." Perhaps next time, you'll live tweet -- or at least send a press release with the specific information you'd like me to know. I could post it online, where you still wouldn't see it.

Insincerely yours,
PaperDoll

 

Three heats of "finals" sounds terrible.
Ohio's state track meet has three divisions and lasts two days. Two prelim heats in all running events except the 4x800 are Friday, with finals on Saturday. All six 4x800 races — three divisions of boys and three of girls — are on Friday. Starts each day at 9:30 a.m. with Division III (small schools) and works it way up to Division I (big schools).
Quick and efficient.

 

That's the way Kentucky used to be, with prelims in all three classes (1A is the smallest, 3A is biggest) on Friday night. The 4x800 was the only championship race contested that night, IIRC, with all other finals on Saturday.

They go slow heat to fast heat, so it takes forever in the distance races.

 

Mississippi has two associations, private and public.
The private school association does all of their field events on Friday and the running on Saturday. There's eight divisions (four classes of boys and girls), but it runs pretty smoothly. Both days started around 9 a.m. and were over by 4:30 p.m. I was talking to the guy who puts the schedule together, and he said he learned it from his old boss at the military school they worked at years ago. They had the schedule in the program to the minute, and I think they were only 10-15 minutes off.

The public schools have six classifications, each with boys and girls. Classes 1A, 3A and 5A compete one day and 2A, 4A and 6A the other. They rotate them between Friday and Saturday every other year.
Sometimes it runs smoothly, other times it's a cluster. Field events begin in the late morning and running goes from about 3 to 7 p.m. They do the 4x800 and 3,200 meter finals along with the field events to help speed it up some.
Thankfully, all of the heats are finals. There's three rounds of qualifying leading up to it, with the top four in each event advancing to the next round. There's a division meet (four teams), a region meet (eight teams) and then North and South State (16 teams, roughly, split along geographical lines). By the time you get to the state meet, it's the top four from the North half and the top four from the South.

 

Minnesota has two classes for track and field. This is a state that has seven football classes. The bottom cut-off for the big class is 527 enrollment, with enrollments going as high as 3,078.

The entire tournament runs in two days for both classes, with mostly prelims on Friday and finals on Saturday.

 

I should clarify for Ohio. No prelims in 800, 1,600 and 3,200. Those are all finals on Saturday.
Two heats of prelims in the 100, 110/100 hurdles, 200, 300 hurdles, 4x100, 4x200 and 4x400 on Friday.

 

Kansas has four regionals in each of the six classes. The top four finishers in every event at each regional go to state. That's it. Then all six classes compete over two days at Wichita State.

 

This is where California doesn't mess around. Track (as well as wrestling) are one-class meets. Trials Friday (except the 3200), finals Saturday.

 

Can you realistically have wrestling divisions/classes? Feel like the weight classes take care of themselves.

Track is good because it doesn't screw around. League finals get you to section prelims/semis/whatever you want to call it and finally finals to get to state. Wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. Log jam is worked out locally.

 

I'm most familiar with the Central, Central Coast and Sac-Joaquin sections, where they'll keep the competitors in divisions until the finals, or as they call it, the Masters meet, out of which athletes qualify for state. Works well, gives the smaller schools a bit of glory in divisionals until they run into (in the case of wrestling in the Central, for this example) some of the powerhouses like Clovis or Buchanan.

The state track meet is the CIF's oldest championship and it would be crazy to do it any other way than one division.