MIDNIGHT TAKES A DOUBLE AT STETHS

When you have a green carpet for a track, like STETHS does, you're going to attract a few athletes. Last Saturday STETHS hosted a "Champs-like" crowd of participants for its Invitational. Perenially one of the best multi-diciplinary meets for the year, the Invitational suffered from an over population of athletes. The accommodating virtue paid a high price when all the 100m heats finished in just under five hours and resulted in the removal of the 1500m from the schedule.

The surge of interest in the sport has been compounded by a banner Olympic year in 2008. The demand for meets by schools and athletes now far outstrip supply. Most meets this season have attempted to host in a single day the same amount of students and events that Champs hosts over a four day period and Champs is among the largest annual High School Championship meets in the world. At some point the powers that be must realize the math just doesn't work. The development schedule needs more meets and better technology to accommodate the quantum size increases that have occurred over the last four years. With that said, I must commend Keith Wellington and Eldemire Smith of STETHS for weathering the flood.

It is a rare year when a MCTF thrower doesn't have a breakout performance at STETHS. This year Emanuel Onyia and Jevaughn Shaw had personal bests in the Class II Discus. Onyia won with 46.98m and Shaw was 4th with 39.07m. Other highlights on the field came from Dexter McKenzie's 6.98m leap in the Class I Long Jump for the win followed up by a 11.06 clocking in the 100m for 7th place overall. Other MCTF wins came from Kaneil Harrison in the Class III 100m (11.47) and Patrick Campbell in the U-17 400mH (58.47).

However, it was Rolando "Mignight" Reid's performances that stole the meet by winning the Class II 100m in 11.07 and coming back to win the Class I&II Grand Prix 100 in 10.90.

A preliminary draft of the meet's results can be found in the "2009 Results" section to the right.

Regards,
B.C. Hayden
Team Manager