Some Random Thoughts on Track & Field

I love the sport of track and filed and I hate to join the naysayer’s and negativists, but I think the sport is in real trouble. How can the Executive Director of USA Track & Filed proclaim that our distance runners are back? Where is the evidence, certainly not in performance? How about progress in the technical events, where is it? Unfortunately you cannot solve the problem by going to the people who created the problem for a solution. There needs to be fresh blood and ideas in the sport. There is more money now than ever and less production – where are the results? For example the California State meet and the CIF Sothern Section Masters meet have been on our cable TV feed. I watched the two meets with great interest because I started my coaching career in California and I feel those two meets are very indicative of the state of the sport. Watching them only confirms again that the sport is in trouble. The depth of performance is not there. There was a scattering of top marks but nothing compared to twenty or thirty years ago. I think part of the problem is that these meets are just not as important to the kids as they used to be. There is now a plethora of all star meets and national meets that have served to diminish the school competition. School competition has always been the cornerstone of our success in the sport. Fewer of the coaches are teachers at the schools, so it is less a part of the whole educational experience. Track & Field is a sport that I love, it gave me my foundation as a coach, I hate to see the path that it is going down.