NFHS bans all electronics at track meets

I'd be fine with no watches if the timing companies would capture the splits properly. Our local timing company only does splits in the biggest meets (and screws them up most of the time)

I also don't know why meet officials can't seem to organize someone to film the meet. It was done at a couple of meets here last year, but for the most part nobody is filming. Which means dozens of parents are filming, making it difficult to film or photograph, and making it difficult to get a good vantage for taking splits. Why not just get a camera set up in the stadium booth and upload it to Athletic.net?

So meets make it difficult to get useful performance data, make it difficult to get photo/video, which then leads to dozens of people trying to manually time and film, which creates more chaos.

They were banned when I coached 12 years ago. I thought the watch ban ended, I didn't know other electronics were allowed.

NFHS rules are written by coaches, officials and school administrators. The member state associations then adopt the NFHS rules for this and other high school sports in their state. To my knowledge, all 51 states (including DC) have adopted the NFHS track & field rules.

The restrictions on use of electronics in the restricted area(s) have been in place for a long time and they appear in all four rule books. (NFHS, NCAA, USATF and WA) What areas are "restricted" is determined by the host school. Safety, with no quotation marks, is a big factor in those decisions. The variety of track & field layouts is virtually infinite. Some schools will even have a designated coaches' box for each event, where coaches can record the event on their tablet and/or yell at their athlete to their hearts content. The restrictions may even be different at the same school, depending on whether it's your standard dual meet or a large "relays" event with hundreds of athletes and dozens of coaches.

And, to be fair, teenage athletes do not need the distraction of their coach talking in their ear or sending them text messages on their Meta glasses while they are running, jumping or throwing.