Went to a track meet with the team over at Kirby High School. A very surreal feeling leaving for the meet. Here I am sitting on a bus with 45 black kids going to a track meet. On the way to the meet one of the kids gets a call from his dad who says the meet started at 3 or 3:30, rather than the 4pm start time that it says on the schedule. Got to the meet and everyone was in a big hurry to get off the bus - I was stuck carrying one of the jugs of water, which I will never let happen again. First event we arrived for was the 100 hurdles. The starter and coaches made the kids who were racing hurdles put the hurdles on the track. I helped out to get things moving along. The two boys we had in the hurdles just did hurdles for the first time yesterday (or Monday?) so I was pretty worried about how the race would go. They ended up doing pretty well - one hurdled well and got 6th (of 7), the other attacked hurdles and went more up than over, but got 3rd, so he was happy. After everybody rushed off the bus and watched the first races the track meet slowed to a crawl. Literally it was the slowest meet I've ever been to. All of the kids on my team who had spikes put them on immediately upon entering the stands - few of them would race in the next hour, and some of them didn't race all night because the meet was so slow. Four teams attended the meet, but each team could only put two runners in each event. Somehow, this translated into 20 minute stretches in between races where absolutely nothing happened. Ridiculous. We get through the 4x1s alright, but then things really slow down before the 400, 4x8, and 1600.
By 5:30, we had been through about 4 events on the schedule with about 8 more to go. At that point, I decided we'd probably be there until 7pm or so. The meet continued to drag. During the girls 800, which went off around 6:45 (?) a girl collapsed right before the backstretch of the first lap. The race continued as people flocked to the fallen girl. This disruption (apparently the girl had asthma, and they called for an ambulance while leaving the girl lying on the track) caused at least a 30 minute stoppage in the meet. At 7:15, when they finally dragged the poor girl off the track, word spread that the rest of the meet would be canceled. Mercifully, I was going to get to go home. By that point, it was cold, the light were on at the stadium, and I started telling parents who were hanging around with their kids to have the kids ask the head coach if they could go home. The pace of the meet was brutal and parents were complaining about it, though not as I much as I was complaining to myself about it. We (I) cleaned up our area of the bleachers and started walking out when kids come running back in the stadium saying the meet is back on.
It's cold (~50), late, and everyone had long since gotten tight muscles. They put boys on the track for the 800, and girls and boys for the 200, and 4x4. To me this was just torture. We had already lost our best sprinter for the day when he pulled a hip flexor or something in the 4x1 for not warming up and stretching properly (no one told these kids how to warmup/stretch properly). I was sure one of the kids in the 200 or 4 x 4 would mess something up, so I made the 400 runners run to the far field goal post a couple of times before leading them in a few stretches. Thankfully there weren't many participants in these events and we finished the meet, heard scores, and got back to school around 8:15 or so. After a 5 hour plus meet (which we were there for 4 hours of), I was rewarded with a 25 minute drive home.
A few reflections:
1. The kids (and fans) are super excited about all the events despite having no idea what is going on. The 4 x 1 was way more exciting than any duel meet I ever ran at - and these were clueless middle schoolers and parents.
2. Despite being the only white person I saw for the first two hours of the meet, I did not feel out of place at all. I know, for certain, that a year ago I could not have imagined myself in such a situation but now it's normal to me.
3. The kids on the team are truly uninformed about track - and I can't blame them. The thing that upsets me is that the head coach doesn't really take the time to do explain some key things - warming up, stretching, staying loose, when to put on spikes, how far each race is. He also doesn't take down times - so I was doing this in a little flip notebook I found in the hallway. I felt like Coleman or Bob Hasson at a track meet.
4. A middle school meet should never, ever, ever, in a billion years, take more than 1.5 or 2 hours. Just get it the fuck over with - who gives a shit if little Bobby or Joanie misses their race.
5. The coaches in MCS really are incompetent when it comes to running a track meet - cut out some of the events and just load up the other events. Meets should not be about scores, but about participation - get everyone a chance to run.
14 years ago