“Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives…. The welfare of our country is the great object to which our cares and efforts ought to be directed, and I shall derive great satisfaction from a cooperation with you in the pleasing though arduous task of insuring to our fellow citizens the blessings which they have a right to expect from a free, efficient, and equal government.”
As 2022 began, there was effectively no indoor track season. While most people complain about the Armory, I hope it’s not lost on how important it was to have the State Championship meet. That kept the focus and hope up for athletes, while establishing precedent for future scenarios.
Overall 2022 was a tremendous year for track and field in Maryland. Many of those performances are listed in the attached article below. Maryland continues to have more and more top tier performances. How the modern day performances statically compare to those in the past will be saved for later, but the upper tier of Maryland track seems to continue to grow, but the depth is not there (look at the current regional entries for indoors). With that being said, there are still some things in Maryland we can do to improve our competitiveness with other states and continues to raise expectations for athletes.
Before moving on to those items, however, there is one statement to make.
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Knowing your Sport and Being a Student of Your Sport
Track and Field seems to be the only sport one can coach and either not have a clue about the sport or refuse to learn anything new. In the era of the Internet, you are intentionally avoiding learning new things. Clinics and courses are expensive, so it’s not reasonable to request you go to those regularly. But with google and youtube, you can learn quite a bit. Three tremendous resources are below.
Understanding all events gives you a far greater appreciation for the sport. It’s perfectly fine to understand Dwight Stones and Carl Lewis are two of the greatest technical jumpers ever, but generally speaking if Flojo or Michael Johnson are the first track athletes that come to mind, it’s time to enter the 21st century.
Managing a high school team is an incredibly, if not impossible task, but there are still gains to be made.
https://trackandfieldnews.com/track-coach/
https://coachesinsider.com/topic/track-x-country/
Below are Five Ideas and Considerations that Maryland Needs to Move Towards in 2023 and Beyond
1. Length of Meets
This has always been a pet peeve, but now it’s slightly getting out of hand. A track meet should last no more than 6 hours. There can be 1 or 2 premier events per season, but especially in Maryland, with its population size, why do we have weekend after weekend with meets going on forever? Limit the teams and raise the price a little if you need to. I’m fully aware of the cost of running a meet, but the break even point is not a million teams.
Furthermore, invitationals are no longer invitationals. If it’s an invitational, you should be invited. But now, it’s go online and sign up and get in. Even if we are 10 teams over what we said we are limiting the meet to.
Indoors, you can easily run two meets in the same day the way the New York Armory does. On a Saturday at PG, have a meet from 9-2 and a second meet from 3-8. You can do 20-25 teams for each of those meets.
Outdoors, Maryland can easily have 4 competitive meets each weekend with 15-25 teams.
2. All Meets are Scored
Can you imagine going to a football or basketball game and the meet isn’t scored. “Hey, what’s the score?” “I don’t know. We’re not keeping track.” That is stupid. Every meet, unless it’s a scrimmage, should be scored. It is asinine and unsportsmanlike to not keep track of scores.
3. Season Standings and Season Champions
As in every single other sport, there needs to be standings and season champions in track.
What is the reason for not having season standings and season champions? Even in the MIAA/IAAM, dual meets are something that just have to be dealt with. Dual meets are a great way to develop JV talent and create rivalries in the sport.
It begs the question to me-What exactly are we doing in track: if we don’t have team scores for every meet and we don’t have season champions, what is the whole point of this thing? The first retort to this is going to be, “Well then I can take my top guys to an 80 hour track meet on Saturday?” Think about this-the basketball and lacrosse teams at your school probably play 20 games. Do they sit their best players on Wednesday, so the coach can take them to a tournament on the weekend? No. And if they do go to a tournament, they take the whole team. Secondly, if winning the season championship isn’t important to you, then A.), you have it wrong and B.) take them to an 80 hour track meet on Saturday-that’s your prerogative. You can do both.
Baltimore and Montgomery may have a more difficult time with the amount of schools, but most counties can get away with dual/tri meets. For most events, have 1 heat for Varsity and 1 heat for JV.
For this upcoming season in Anne Arundel, you could have 5 straight weeks of tri meets scored as double duals. Now there are logistical and financial considerations at hand, but realistically the baseball teams in AA are each playing 15 games which is a lot of busses.
Everyone loves their FAT, but we can do hand timing for dual meets or maybe we find a way where the first three are hand timed and the last two are FAT.
4. Long Jump and Triple Jump at the Indoor State Championship
I want to say I understand the reasoning why there is no long jump or triple jump at the indoor state meet, but upon further review, it is absolutely stupid not having them. Take the top 16 jumpers from each classification, give them 4 jumps and no finals at the state meet. If you are down at PG this week, look at the runways being completely empty and say to yourself, “That makes total sense.” Again, I get the reason on the surface, but we are holding back athletes and teams by not competing in these events. One thing to consider in this scenario. PG County does not allow pole vault. Did we remove pole vault from the state championship meet? No.
5. More Female Coaches
There are two points included here:Â the lack of female coaches and the lack of young coaches.
When going to a track meet, unless I’m blind, which is always a consideration, there seems to be a great deal more of male coaches than female coaches. That can be fine-best person for the job, but if I had to guess it would be at least 2:1 men to women coaches when the participation rate is probably closer to 1:1. Another issues at hand is the lack of young coaches, as we want young coaches to bring in fresh ideas and energy. Plus we want them experienced coaches in 5-10 years.
While coaching is focused on high school, overall there are far more female teachers in the teaching profession, so where are all the female coaches? My initial thought is women aren’t out there because they tend to take on child rearing responsibilities to a higher degree. But that does not account for the lack of female coaches who just graduated from college. Also, too, I don’t see many recent male graduates. Is this because no one goes into teaching anymore? Or because coaching stipends are garbage? Just wondering the reason.
2022 v 2023
How it started:
How it’s going:
“We are stronger today — we are stronger today than we were a year ago. And we’ll be stronger a year from now than we are today.”
https://chasingthestandard.com/2023/01/chasing-the-standards-top-10-moments-of-track-and-field-in-2022/