Why do California high schools start the 800 so weirdly?

I suspect at-large times are a big reason why it is run that way. With the amount of people making the state meet in the 800 these days you need a way to run more people so that you either don't need to run a dozen heats or only move the top 3 finishers of each heat to the finals.

It's strange, but i'm fine with it. The other two options kind of just suck. It already takes 1:52ish to make the finals, and cutting that down is gonna create problems.

That is just lazy meet direction...period. Sprinters and their coaches wouldn't stand for waterfall starts in the 400 yet, directors feel justified in eliminating 800 heats to make their meet 20 minutes shorter.

As a meet director, I'd make sure to top 8 entries use 1 turn stagger and break. Waterfall for the others. Those at higher speeds deserve a little more elbow room. The rest get spread out pretty quickly and arent all that aggressive because most think 800 is a distance race. A lot of leftovers entered there because they arent fast enough for sprinting or committed enough to get better at distance running. 2-3 min committment is all they are willing to give in some cases. Others its a stepping stone and a great way to teach how to be competitive before they are ready to step up. Running a mile and racing a mile are 2 completely different things and the same can be said for a lot of kids at 800.

World class mile and 1500 races use waterfall starts with the guys going through 800 split in 1:52. How fast are these high school guys who are too fast for waterfall?

Yea i agree, ideal is alleys for 800 but waterfall or double waterfall works given the race usually only has 1-3 people who are really fast. They ran my daughter in a 32 person waterfall for the 800 a few summers back, now that was lazy.

Lazy or a response to track meets are too long. If you break those into flights of 16 (2 per lane) then you have to run 2 races and that takes more time.

in a well run meet an extra 800m heat will add around 4 minutes to a program

We use a double waterfall in CA, with 12 kids. I thought it was too much when we switched, but it's kind of grown on me.

I can agree with this. Invitationals, small league meets, etc, then sure, I can live with waterfall if it makes the meet go by faster.

However, I would prefer to draw the line once you start hitting postseason. There's no reason for a waterfall at that point, and the kids competing are committed and fast enough to deserve their own space when starting before merging.

This may be a hot take, but I also feel like it'd make times a little bit faster as well, since there's a tighter group of runners and bigger advantages in racing.

Yeah, I live in California too and I have raced the 800 in a waterfall almost always. The only exception was some trials like at our sac joaquin masters, and my divisional meet before that.

I guess if there's 8 or less competitors in a heat, they do lanes, but I don't understand why the limit was bumped from that to 12.

The reason why is that starters, officials and meets are lazy. One turn stagger or alleys are more work for the meet and officials.

It's more about the total duration than pace, 3 and a half minutes is more time to get sorted out than 2 minutes. Although world class 1500s and high school 800s are both very physical (except when Jakob races, then everyone gets into single file line to ride the train). Personally I think waterfall 800s are a sh**show just because of how it is off the line, in the 1500 it's not optimal but still more realistic to just hang back and let everyone sort themselves out before moving to the front. You just don't have enough moves in the 800 and pacing / positioning in that first 200 matters way more.

the solution is:

you put up to 2 athletes in a lane and run lane for one turn

pair the fastest runner with the slowest running and put the faster runner on the inside.

2nd fastest with the 2nd slowest,etc.

When they moved to waterfalls in CA they did it because an athlete can only qualify for the state meet if he or she runs the qualifying time at your section finals. By moving to the waterfall start, it allowed more athletes to participate in section finals and have a chance to qualify for the state meet. The motivation was not to shorten the meet. I didn't live it then and I still don't love it as athletes are much more likely to get tangled up coming off of a waterfall start. I think that times are generally slower off of a waterfall than a laned start because of the early race congestion.

Is there some Section in CA that I am not aware of that is taking more than 12 to the final?

It made sense to expand the number of runners in the finals of each meet when they started making the fields for the semi's a lot larger. I'd prefer they go back to 3 semi's of 9 at the state meet, with 9 making the finals and run in lanes. Sure some athletes would get screwed along the way by being in a lopsided semi, but that is part of the magic of the CA state meet.

Not that I know of, but when they used to start the 800m in lanes, sections only took 8 or 9 athletes to the final, depending on how many lanes there were on the track.

There are still only 27 automatic qualifiers to the state meet in each event. The rest come from athletes outside of the automatic qualifying positions who run the at-large time at their section final. The difference now is that they move 12 to the final instead of 9.

This is exactly what I was thinking, if there'll be no more than 27 athletes total that will compete in the semifinals, then what the hell is the point of 12 finalists? 27 is dividable by 9 while 12 is not.

You could easily just have 3 heats, 9 runners per heat, making 27 total. Top two from each of the three heats qualify, making 6 finalists. Then, add the next 3 fastest times to make 9. Boom.

Could honestly work for any event 100-800, including hurdles tbh.