Who are the New Jersey Track Officials?!?!

The blocks had nothing to do with officials and everything to do with nj track coaches sabotaging themselves and not realizing it until this week.

The 1600 dq was totally ridiculous

While there is a main body of NJSIAA track officials in many areas of the state there are local group of officials that pretty much 100% control the sport. Some of them are coaching, being meet director and official all at the same time.

The best way to sum up NJ track officials is they would rather yell and threaten to DQ people than pay attention what is going on. Also they seem to have way too many standing around doing pretty much nothing except getting in the way of fans, coaches and media.

At state meets the same group are assigned year in and year out and each season with little chance of new blood breaking in

dweebymcfanny wrote:

The blocks had nothing to do with officials and everything to do with nj track coaches sabotaging themselves and not realizing it until this week.

I'm almost certain it was a question of time saving. And for what? To save 30 mins? It's the state championships. Athletes know where and how to set their blocks by then. If anything, banning blocks at the meet was certainly a safety issue, as it rained on Friday soaking the track.

The North 2 Gr. 1,4 meet was postponed to a single day meet after the track flooded and the Meet Director got trigger happy and decided to cancel the day. Meanwhile, the track at Ridge completely dried up after 30 mins. Piss poor management.

Maybe the NJSIAA had to change. Cancelling the 2020 MOC XC meet was a mistake, especially considering there were two large championship caliber meets held at Holmdel that month.

NJ has an incredible history of track and field and has national class talent year in and year out.

You would think the NJSIAA would try to escape their protocols from 25 years ago and catch up with some of the other states. The officiating and production of the state meets are below average at best.

I saw a tweet earlier about a kid who should have easily made it out sectionals this weekend but wasn't allowed to start his race because his coach didn't highlight his name...what good does that do for anyone?

There are too many great track minds in NJ for the sport to be dictated by a handful or senile bureaucratic fools.

The nj coaches voted to not use blocks as sectional sites complained about the damage they caused to their tracks as well as the proposed inequity of different sites have different quality of blocks. It was voted on two years ago by coaches.

As to the other point…if a coach didn’t check in a kid that sucks for the kid but also that’s a pretty standard check in process around the country. You screw it up you screw it up. You can’t blame officials for doing their job and enforcing the rules. Seems like the coaches screw up not the officials.

By and large I think most officials everywhere try hard to do a good job and the right thing but there are some atrocious ones out there as well.

As someone earlier pointed out - Jackson braddocks dq was super silly and unnecessary.

dweebymcfanny wrote:

The nj coaches voted to not use blocks as sectional sites complained about the damage they caused to their tracks as well as the proposed inequity of different sites have different quality of blocks. It was voted on two years ago by coaches.

I have been around track for almost 40 years and I have never seen a track "damaged" by starting blocks. For the life of me I can't even comprehend what these coaches could be referring to. I have seen entire football teams walk across tracks wearing cleats many times and nobody even cares to lie down a mat across the track. There is a much higher risk of damage from that than from starting blocks. Are the runners dropping starting blocks on the track from above their heads or something?

There should not be any "inequality" of starting blocks. The host team for every large meet I have ever attended has always provided blocks for all competitors. If they don't own 6-8 blocks then they shouldn't be hosting a championship meet. If an athlete or team decides to bring their own that is their choice and is just fine. Throwers all bring their own implements and there is a significant difference in price/quality of these implements. Football teams always bring their own balls to use. Are they going to cancel the game because one team uses superior balls and thus "inequality" exists?