I spent 8 LONG hours at a high school track meet—ask me anything

Who won the fat man relay? The one with all the field guys in it. What's that one where they have to wear or carry a car tire?

FormerTree wrote:

It seems like the amount of downtime between heats / events is a huge culprit. Granted, it's been 7 years since I suffered through a HS meet, but I just don't understand why it takes several minutes to sort out FAT between every race. This even occurs at the college/elite/professional level. Since all the data/photos/video is stored electronically, can't you be sorting that out after the next heat takes off (particularly in a distance race)?

FAT timing should never be the reason for downtime between heats. If it is, then the people doing it do not know what they are doing.

Your last sentence is exactly how it works. The picture is captured as the runners finish. As soon as the last runner finishes, you save the picture and advance to the next event. You are now ready for the next heat to start.

If the FAT timers know what they are doing they will have a 2nd computer that then opens the previous heat and evaluates the image while the next heat is going on. If they are only using 1 computer and waiting to start the next heat until after the previous heat has been evaluated, then they are not doing it correctly.

The downtime between heats almost always is due to the officials not getting the next heat onto the track and ready to run in a timely fashion. It is not because of the FAT timing. The guy that suggested not FAT timing all the slower heats is wrong. That does not save time. You can FAT time every heat, you just have to get the next heat on the track and be ready to start them as soon as possible after the completion of the previous heat.

As for the distance races, you should not have to worry about laps in the distance races anymore. The FAT timers should capture pictures of the athletes every time they cross the finish line and evaluate their splits. Anyone that doesn't cross the finish line the appropriate number of times will end up not having the correct number of splits and then they can be listed as a DNF.

Just attended my son’s 1st high school track meet and originally was to run the 1 mile around 2:30ish- we got there at 10:30 am and it was 5:15 Pm when we finally watched him run

Do kids still pack a lunch/cooler? Or Doordash fast food in?

wow this is an old thread but it's still relevant.

The things is now most meets have heat sheets posted on line so this isnt something that just the coach has one copy of on a clip board like the old days.

look up the heats, you can guessitmate the time it will take to run off each heat and adjust from there.

where i grew up we had JV/frosh meets separate from varsity with like 4 teams in a meet, thursday or friday nights (varsity usually saturday), in kind of a league format. girls usually barely had enough people to do a heat of JV per event. boys usually 1 heat per class, maybe 2 in a sprint. 1 flight on field events. numbers are kept down by the varsity kids have a separate day and it's just 4 teams and not every team has a full subvarsity set of entries.

by comparison we had a good varsity and we did like 4 big college-HS meets at elite D1s and it would be 6 am-midnight endurance fests. but that would be 15-20 HS teams plus college races.

to me the ideal would probably be something like a SCIAC school does in D3 college. i think they run like 3-4 quad meets with a rotating scheduling of opponents. a HS team could even, as our JV did, compete not just within conference but that whole side of town. which keeps "league" fresh while you can still do quad meets.

then have some weeks where you can do whatever including the endurance fest meets with dozens of teams. but that way you have some set of meets that get in and get out.

i personally think, and this may not be popular, but there is higher entertainment value and more fairness in non-seeded heats. the kid next heat could be the 22s kid or the 30s kid and you just don't know.

where i grew up you advance on placement from your area meet as opposed to time. this reduces the pressure to have a fast heat. you still might want your kids matching up some with the best to be prepared, but you don't have to throw down a fast time in a normal meet to to move on towards state, so you could economize anything but the area championship.

but anyhow, to me limiting varsity to 3 runners and then subvarsity in another meet entirely helps.

re "have a second track" and "but it has to be FAT," does it really? why couldn't we do it NFL combine-style some weeks? like for the massive meets, you report to some indoor or outdoor space in trainers, away from the track. you run point to point and get a stopwatch time a la NFL combine. we run a set of qualifying distances at each station. you lay down a time. you do well enough on rank you make the finals and get to the track part with FAT. want to run multiple events? go to multiple stations. mile and 2 mile we run some distance almost XC style. stations are open from when you arrive until some time around lunch. real meet starts at lunch.

or, have groups report to the station, spread across the field/hallway, and x amount of places advance.

pro cross country skiing they do staggered sprint qualifying. like every 30s-1 min someone leaves. time kept. top x make the races which are heat style. it can be exhausting but part of the game is going fast enough to advance while having gas for the main event.

you can then run other big meets the normal way, quad and state-progression meets the normal way.

nothing says the competition has to be literally obvious, boring, and repetitive. not sure why part of it couldn't be a little "field day." in select soccer when we had tournaments we would often have multiple short group games with 30 min halves instead of 40-45. or we would play 6-aside. in college instead of one spring game we would host a 2 day 6 aside tourney that would have like minor league pros, D1, D3, etc. one year we beat a D1 and had the pro team on the ropes.

I watched a top 16 women’s basketball team play a couple of days ago (they’ll probably be better than a #4 seed). Tons of airballs, no athleticism, etc

Track meets are no longer track meets. They are fundraisers.

Yes, at some point the organizer has to say NO. But... when hosting a meet is the main only means of funding your team, there's no incentive to ever say no or to limit the size of the field.