Chattanooga Optimist Southeastern Track & Field Invitational
Meet Review
State Cross Country Championships Meet Review
Featured Athletes: Pierce Rose and Carlton Orange
Featured Athletes: Alexa Brainard and Drew Carff
Featured Athlete – Savannah Jordan – White Station Junior
Featured Athlete: Mayson Morrissett – St. Benedict Senior
Savannah College of Arts and Design is part of the Sun Conference and one of the many choices by Caroline Cook for her post high school running career. It’s not the typical school you hear mentioned when talking with talented athletes like Caroline. But the more you get to know this talented track and cross country athlete, the more that school sounds like a pretty good match. She wants to pursue a career in Television and Broadcasting. I’m not exactly sure how that matches with her athletic prowess, but I do know in that career path you can’t be afraid to have the limelight on you at all times. Since her running career started, she has always been at the top of the pack and with that, dead center in the limelight. Seems this is a familiar and comfortable spot for her, so yes, maybe the two are more of a match than what they first seemed to be
TSSAA State Track and Field Championships
New State meet records, Personal Bests, 254 National Elite Performances! What a great Track & Field Meet!
With some semi tall buildings surrounding the track, the old architecture of the buildings, the full wall mural overseeing the venue, the Section 4 sectional had a nice tight knit feeling. Crump stadium was recently renovated and the track resurfaced to make for a very nice location to hold a high level competition. The prelims and field events were completed over the previous Monday and Tuesday evening’s setting up to see who will be the final athletes to stamp their ticket to Murfreesboro.
Memphis University School campus was the home for some very exciting few days of Track & Field this week. Tuesday started out with the field events, a four thirty start for the Women high jump, triple, discus, pole vault and the men’s shot and long jump. The remaining events started at around six thirty, but the men’s pole vault didn’t start till Wednesday, just before the prelims and 3200 finals.
Some states contest the Decathlon & Pentathlon during larger weekend meets. I remember going to a Track meet last year in April in upstate New York and the meet started at 11am on a Thursday morning with the Pentathlon & Decathlon and finished Saturday around 2pm with the regular schedule. According to the athletes, you got out of school early on those days if you were a multi-eventer – an incentive for sure, but it was a tough ticket to get if you were on the track team. The multi’s were reserved for the best of the best on the team. Athletes that possessed the drive, the strength, the speed, and the stamina to handle multiple events over either the one or two days were the ones that got the nod to compete.
Anytime you can get over 900 Track & Field athletes together at one time, you can probably expect some performances to stand out. The Houston Track classic again put its stamp as the largest meet in the area. And right there with the Optimist meet on the other side of the state, it not only is the largest but it’s also a well know and long running meet. A great meet for any athlete, and a must have for a local athlete. Each team is allowed three athletes per event and this year, the prelims were designed so there were two final heats in all qualifying running events. That’s fourteen athletes that had the chance to qualify out of the Friday prelims.
A Track & Field jamboree is a great opportunity to give coaches a chance to identify what talent they have in all the events. It’s also a chance to test their athletes in a competitive environment without having to worry much about scoring team points.
Track & Field is getting ready to start the 2013 season. This is a preview of the Division 1 Field Events based on last season’s performances and other sources (coaches, athletes). It’s unfortunate, but the field events are sometimes overlooked when people think about Track & Field. Sometimes it’s the highly technical aspects of field events that make the events difficult to coach properly.
Track & Field is getting ready to start the 2013 season. For some coaches, you are still evaluating the athletes you have this season, waiting for the winter sports to end to see who will come out from there, and maybe trying to fill spots vacated by graduation. For athletes, you may already know where your niche is or maybe you’re in the middle of evaluations to determine that.
Athletes are working on their fitness, coaches are getting their rosters finalized, meets are scheduled and overall the track season is on us again. The following is a preview of the West TN area D2 Track & Field athletes based on performances throughout last years’ season. Some of the information comes from the TN Runner/Mile Split rankings, some from coaches and athletes input, some from observations, and then some from just flat out what I think. Not all is perfect, but I would venture to say that unless you happen to have a Usain Bolt at the starting line, predicting the finish of a track event is everything unpredictable. As a coach you’ve seen it, as an athlete you’ve experienced it.
When it comes to Track & Field, some coaches would rather call it Field and Track. I’ve seen some interesting T-shirts pushing for the Field events, like “It’s a Discus, not a Frisbee”; “It’s FIELD & Track”; “Pole Vault” (with the letters upside down); “Eat, Sleep, Hammer”; “You’re going to need a longer measuring tape!” – and a lot more that show a preference for these events. The field events give coaches a chance to rack up points early in a meet since they typically are the events starting out the meet.
The Percy Warner course is a very spectator friendly course. If you’re willing, you can run from one side to another and up and down hills to get a glimpse of your favorite athlete. If you’re an athlete, well, this course has its moments. Although from a spectator’s point of view, the course doesn’t seem that hilly, but it is. And with the course being wide open, the wind will sometimes play games with you too. With that said, the times at these championships don’t always give you a good feeling that you are watching some extremely talented athletes tearing up a tough course.
About a hundred or so athletes sprinting down a gradual hill towards the only small opening that leads to a path into a thick patch of trees, prickly bushes, and who knew what else. First one there gets the lead. You needed the lead, or at least wanted to be in front of your competitors since it was a path so narrow that you couldn’t help but worry about bumping your shoulders against the trunks of some of those trees.
