Making Track and Field better for the casual fan

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EuclidandViren

Well-known member
I have fiddled with this idea the past decade in the back of my head.

I would love to hear ideas from coaches and the general public.

Through my research of trial and errors, the best way to make it better is to make meets simple: time schedules for all events and hosting a meet within 3 hours. The 3 hour threshold is important with the busy lives and keeping people's attention.

I believe this helps parents, students, and the casual fan understand the basics. I believe this is why many people would choose XC over track because of showing up on Saturday, and knowing that their daughter/son will run at 11:30 am and be over by 11:50 am. There are no surprises in XC compared to track. No added events or delays. In XC every member on the team races every Saturday together as a team. I like this idea too and wonder if having more dual and tri-meets would help with the team atmosphere in track. The last 25 years of my coaching, I feel that he dual/tri meet has disappeared and the Saturday meets are almost all gone in favor of the Friday night mega meets.

What are some other ideas for making tack and field better for the casual fan?
 
 
Full disclosure, one reason I posted this was the indoor state meet schedule. Almost 12 hours of events. With warmup and cooldown, we are looking at 13 hours for one athlete.

With driving my team 4+ hours and then having an athlete competing at 9 am for long jump and 8 pm for the 4x400, I find this the meets order of events ridiculous. This athlete will be at SPIRE from 7:30 am to around 9 pm.

I could be wrong, but is this good for the sport?
 
EuclidandViren said:
I have fiddled with this idea the past decade in the back of my head.

I would love to hear ideas from coaches and the general public.

Through my research of trial and errors, the best way to make it better is to make meets simple: time schedules for all events and hosting a meet within 3 hours. The 3 hour threshold is important with the busy lives and keeping people's attention.

I believe this helps parents, students, and the casual fan understand the basics. I believe this is why many people would choose XC over track because of showing up on Saturday, and knowing that their daughter/son will run at 11:30 am and be over by 11:50 am. There are no surprises in XC compared to track. No added events or delays. In XC every member on the team races every Saturday together as a team. I like this idea too and wonder if having more dual and tri-meets would help with the team atmosphere in track. The last 25 years of my coaching, I feel that he dual/tri meet has disappeared and the Saturday meets are almost all gone in favor of the Friday night mega meets.

What are some other ideas for making tack and field better for the casual fan?
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I think most of us have similar thoughts; however, the biggest problem at the smaller meet level is the staffing available to enforce said schedules. Someone or somebodies have to ride herd over the conduct of a meet to enforce schedules.
 
4 Divisions for the indoor state meet was already "flaw" #1..having 3 separate state meet would have made more sense just because of the overall lack of "full" throttle teams in indoor..meaning Indoor already have less athletes and teams that partake in Indoor compared to Outdoor and this is just my opinion, but I am not sure having 4 made sense.

'Flaw #2" was combining Divisions for the meet schedule each day..why? It seems it was mentioned to "promote individuals doubling and tripling open events" for the State Meet. I would have much rather had Division 4 first half of day, break, then Division 3 second half..similar to Saturday with having let's say D2 in morning, D1 afternoon/early evening..instead the meet becomes a 12 hour day for fans, kids, coaches, etc..not sure this was a wise move

Lastly, again, everything above are all just opinions..not saying this "should have" been what they should have done, but I feel what could make this sport better (Track) is separating meets by gender..To accommodate meets that have distance relays (4x mile, DMR, etc) or the meets that just in general have more heats and athletes/teams competing, having let's say at the Yappi Track Festival, the boys portion of the meet starts at 9:00am and ends at 12:30pm, with the girls 1:30 to 5:00pm.each meet being 3.5 hours. This is just an example by the way. This obviously may still impact coaches that coach both genders or parents that have kids on both gender teams, but overall this would improve our sport so that this sport is not a whole day event, and can be watched and enjoyed (and performed) at a more effective and efficiient way that could allow the sport to even be more exciting and intense than it already is.
 
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Nothing needs changed.

Dual meets for maximum participation. Cannot get any simpler than dual meets. Schedule those. Have your conference count them and make them mean something.

As a coaching staff, we get together and evaluate the invites we go to every year. We know the schedule and how long meets take. If a meet is worth it going long, we still do it. If it's not, we schedule a different meet the next year.

Our participation is the highest it's ever been.

I don't believe there is such thing as a casual fan. It's about the kids participating and not the casual fan. IMO
 
EuclidandViren said:
Full disclosure, one reason I posted this was the indoor state meet schedule. Almost 12 hours of events. With warmup and cooldown, we are looking at 13 hours for one athlete.

With driving my team 4+ hours and then having an athlete competing at 9 am for long jump and 8 pm for the 4x400, I find this the meets order of events ridiculous. This athlete will be at SPIRE from 7:30 am to around 9 pm.

I could be wrong, but is this good for the sport?
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No it is not! Plus no cell reception, horrible almost non existent WiFi, huge lines for food, over crowded stands and walkways, a non functioning PA system along with score boards that are blocked by said crowd and a far mounted one that is damn near impossible to read, and being there at 7:30 am and not getting home for (some of us) until 3:00am on Sunday. How can this be good for athletes, family or fans?
 
Ahhh… brings back memories of stopping at the Waffle House on I-71 at 2:00 AM after leaving the D2 indoor meet at OSU where they were running heets of the girls 200 with only one or two runners after midnight. “Can’t combine heets because of no-shows because it will mess up the computer.” 🙄
 
I was watching a couple of California outdoor track meets that were on live this weekend and it was interesting how efficient they ran things. Both were huge meets. In the distance races, they would have the next heat lined up on the track while the current heat was finishing. They also used waterfall starts, even in 800. In the 100 and 100/110 hurdles they were running on both sides of the track. I think this was the second week of outdoor track for California, but first week for big invitationals.
 
There is going to be very few casual fans of HS track particularly in Ohio where the weather is not pleasant to sit around in for 3 hours for much of the season. So make it best you can for participates.

Best thing that could be done for all involved is get everyone into the blocks and start the 100, 200 and high hurdles quicker. The time between heats at some of the meets is longer than it needs to be.
 
I agree that the format of the meet probably should change for next year. It was just too long. I was lucky, and my PV coach was there at 8:00 for my vaulter (9:15) and I got there about 2:30 for my 800 runner (5:50). But this was the first year of four divisions, so there were bound to be issues.

As for meets in general, it really comes down to how well you run the meet. We often have 400+ athletes competing in our dual meets, but we can usually finish in under three hours. I agree with psychodad that we should make meets that work for the athletes. We shouldn't do things that discourage casual fans, but that should not be the organizing principle for meets.
 
"Casual" fans (not sure there is such a thing for D3 Track and Field in Ohio, would probably care most about finals. I think the championship meets have it right, especially at the district levels. At my team's district meet, 51 athletes competed in the boys 100m prelims but if you come on Saturday, you only have to watch 1 heat and you'll see who wins. It's more of a time commitment on coaches, athletes, and families but "casual fans" would prefer that.
 
CFeisel said:
"Casual" fans (not sure there is such a thing for D3 Track and Field in Ohio,
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100% my point exactly. Some people would be casual fans if it were more accessible. My father and his friends in their late 70s attend a couple of meets a year together. In the city, it was a right of passage to attend a Friday night meet and watch the 100-meter guys at the finish line. With the crowd roaring and the whoop whoop.

This can happen if we don't have 12-hour meets.
 
Every meet should have live timing you can see on your phones.
Easiest way to keep everyone engaged.

AND KEEP SCORE. You shouldn't leave a meet not knowing which team won or lost
 
KingHorn419 said:
Every meet should have live timing you can see on your phones.
Easiest way to keep everyone engaged.

AND KEEP SCORE. You shouldn't leave a meet not knowing which team won or lost
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Teams leave meets before final scores are even tallied. I cannot tell you how many awards we have sitting around for athletes and teams from past invitationals.
 
psycho_dad said:
Teams leave meets before final scores are even tallied. I cannot tell you how many awards we have sitting around for athletes and teams from past invitationals.
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I remember many times not getting medals/ribbons at meets in the early 80s the day of and instead having to wait for that school mailing those items to our coach.
 
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