Now that we've reached the end of the week, what's the lay of the land?
When last week started, I had no idea how interesting it would all get.
For one thing, it nearly became a full-time job keeping up with meets moving to different dates on the calendar. Every time a meet moves, there are little adjustments I need to make on the site on my end. It's all part of the job.
Some meets were quick to move. Some, perhaps recalling having to admit defeat and cancel last year, held out to the bitter end before canceling. But, eventually, just about all of them--or at least those east of the Continental Divide--ended up either moving or canceling.
It all became such a topic of conversation that Channel 5 News out of Colorado Springs/Pueblo actually caught up with me at the Coronado Cougar Classic and interviewed me about what was going on with all the meet changes. For a moment or two, I felt like a celebrity, but I've found that feeling quickly fades and life is better again once it does.
For the record, and we'll do a little analysis on some of the why of this in a moment, here's a list of meets that moved over the last three or four days:
Holy War - moved to Wednesday
No-Name Invitational - moved to Wednesday and bumped the Lyons JV Championships off the calendar, at least partly absorbing same
Welco Championships - moved to Wednesday and absorbed, more or less in entirety, the Welco JV Championships
Coronado Cougar Classic - winning the award for minimal dislocation was the CCC, it simply moved two hours earlier on Friday morning. The net effect of that move, however, was negligible as the meet also absorbed a few teams bailing from other Saturday meet dates and consequently became a much-longer-than-planned affair.
Liberty Bell - The folks up in Littleton threw in the towel and canceled this year's version of the meet.
Akron - Canceled. Apparently nobody wanted to grab shot puts under 30-30 (wind & temperature) conditions.
El Paso County Small Schools - Officially, I never heard this meet canceled (or possibly postponed--entries are still open, suggesting the latter), but having spent the entire day in Colorado Springs today, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Grace Center did not host any track meets today.
Grandview - For the second year in a row, John Reyes was compelled to cancel this meet.
Ram Charger - Ditto Grandview. Green Mountain held out until late Friday before throwing in the towel on this one. Most of the teams scheduled to come, though, had already done so.
Springfield - Canceled. Springfield may have been among the warmest places in the eastern half of the state today, but it still wasn't track meet weather.
Strasburg - Canceled. You probably weren't in Strasburg today, but you can probably imagine what it was like there even so.
Vista Ridge - Rescheduled to Monday of next week.
High Altitude Challenge - Rescheduled to Tuesday of next week.
Elizabeth Cardinal Classic - Rescheduled to Thursday of next week, with an absorption of the Elizabeth JV meet along the way.
Those meets that rescheduled into the coming week likely face diminished meet participation. Any time you reschedule, you mess with a lot of things, and not just things on your own end. Teams have to decide how, if at all, they're going to adjust upcoming practice and meet schedules to accommodate your adjustment. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.
If you've been around track and field a while, say something on the order of 20 years, you might recall a time when it wasn't like this.
It used to be that when really ugly weather moved in on a spring weekend, all the meets canceled, everyone stayed home, popped some popcorn, and shoved a movie into their VHS player. And, nobody posted pictures of their backyard on Facebook or Snapchat. Somehow, we could all imagine what it looked like without those.
So, why the changes? Specifically, why the change in the way the track and field community responds to a late spring storm? There's a simple, one word, answer. It's rankings.
As the state meet approaches, nobody really wants to miss out on an opportunity to take a shot at improving their best mark. Not coaches, not athletes, and not parents. So, meets scatter and scramble to find alternate places on the calendar as if our very lives hung in the balance.
I like our state qualifying system; I really do. I do believe, however, it has brought a few obsessive-compulsive tendencies to the surface in almost all of us.
On the other hand, I also temper that assessment with a realization that meets also used to forge ahead through much more abusive weather than they do now. Meets would regularly run to completion with temperatures in the 30s.
I vividly recall a TCA parent of about 15 years ago cooking up a crockpot of potato soup and bringing it to Elbert where the entire track team was huddled in a large camping tent (many of the kids in mummy bags) trying to find some way, away way to stay warm. A styrofoam bowl of piping-hot potato soup never tasted better, nor ever did as much to warm my soul, either before or since. Thank you again, Mrs. Horne. You were a godsend that day.
That track meet, by the way, did make it all the way through to the end. Nobody really warmed up for their events that day; it was warmer in the tent. There probably would not have been any qualifying marks earned had it been a rankings meet, but we made it through. And, I must confess, I'm not really sure I want to go back to doing track meets in that kind of weather.
I also recall running the 880 (yards) in our regional meet my junior year of high school in the middle of a driving snowstorm. We never stopped the meet as nothing was really piling up. It was just horizontal snow for an hour or so in the afternoon. I also remember my mother telling me we were "a little addlepated" to be running around in shorts and a singlet in that kind of weather (performance underlayers were unheard of in the 70s).
She was probably right about the addlepated part. Even so, I recall being okay with it at the time.