Nemo Finds Mass.- Track Meets Take Back Seat
If you troll the internet looking for comments about the Merrimack Valley Conference Championship Meet, you're not going to find a whole lot of happy people stating their opinions. A self-described "rock fight" (Ouellet, Scott), the MVC meet is a chance for the state's deepest league pit some of its best teams against one another in a certain precursor to a divisional meets a week later. But it was not to be for Lowell, Tewksbury, Andover, and the rest, as Blizzard Nemo forced Friday's meet to be cancelled; and with no makeup date set, the athletes who failed to achieve qualifying standards prior to this weekend will have to wait. The seniors will never get that chance.
While the MVC wasn't the only league affected by this storm, it was certainly the hardest hit, as the league runs its dual meets on various 150 yard tracks around the North Shore, making qualifying standards particularly challenging to achieve throughout the dual meet season. The Patriot League lost its Friday night meet as well, and despite making every attempt to reschedule, the duration and scope of the storm simply made it impossible. The Hockomock and Greater Boston Leagues lost their meets as well, as did the EAC. The one league that maneuvered its' way back into the Reggie was the Dual County League, which miraculously pulled together a Sunday 2:00 PM start, despite school cancellations ravaging Monday's school days. How's this for logic? You can't practice Friday or Saturday, you CAN compete on Sunday at Reggie, but you can't practice Monday in your gym. Welcome to track and field in Massachusetts.
So, for these kids, there's little solace in hearing that "we're all in the same boat," because, frankly, we are not. Those league's that got their championship meets in, such as the Bay State League, will likely receive a benefit from getting its meet in on Wednesday, but those athletes will lose valuable practice time leading up to the state meet.
So, what's the solution. One possibility is settling the Last Chance to Qualify Meet on the Saturday (or Sunday) before the divisional meets. With next year's Wednesday-Sunday divisional schedule set for indoors, this might not be ideal for athletes looking to improve on pre-existing qualifying times, but the meet shouldn't really be for those kids anyways. Conference meets should begin scheduling at various tracks during the week leading up. A real Last Chance Meet should be just that- the Last Chance. Another suggestion is for league's to formulate real backup plans going into the season in case of inclement weather. BU's track was scheduled to be used all weekend for its Valentine Inivtational, but that meet also got cancelled, unfortunately.
My recommendation, not that anyone listens to me or cares what I think, is to have a statewide Commissioner of Track & Field, neither working for the MSTCA, nor the MIAA. This individual would be responsible for fairly placing leagues at the several 200 meter tracks around the state (including in the East, Reggie Lewis, Harvard, BU, Wheaton, and some day, New Balance's beautiful Brighton facility) and giving that individual or body the power to schedule and reschedule fairly. The fact that the DCL got in to Reggie today but the MVC did not, is simply a matter of some shrewd coaches and AD's knowing with whom to speak, and perhaps simply having the pull to convince their school districts to allow them to travel.
Nevertheless, no matter what ends up being done (my guess: nothing), those poor seniors who didn't qualify for the state meet will never get that chance back. A shame.
--
--