Brutal weather slows Southland track teams

Baby, it's cold outside.

This delayed (canceled?) spring, with only one balmy day and few others not conducive to outdoor activity, has affected every outdoor spring sport. Even as baseball and softball coaches deal with schedules arranged on the fly, track coaches are in a similar jam.

"I would just like to get one good day," said John Duckhorn, coach of Eisenhower's boys team.

He wouldn't mind it being Thursday, when Eisenhower hosts the Terry Englund Relays, one of the top events on the calendar. But more than one good day is needed to catch up. Times, especially for sprinters, aren't improving as they usually do.

"It's brutal," Providence boys coach Mark Coglianese said. "It really puts a crimp in what you can do. You can't get speed work in. You can't work skills, like pole vault. You can't work hurdles. In the cold, it's hard to get muscles warmed up properly."

Coglianese's daughter, Mandy, is a perfect example. A premier hurdler, she posted a 45.80 time in the 300 hurdles April 9. That leads the Southland by more than a second, but it's likely both she and those pursuing her would since have improved their times. With the awful weather, few have gotten better. (Only distance runners, used to bad weather from cross country, seem unaffected.)

Duckhorn's answer to bad weather - and no field house - is heading to the weight room.

"We tell the kids to hit the weights twice a week all season," Duckhorn said. "But we're flexible. If I see by the five-day forecast only Monday will be our only break in the weather, we'll go outside, because we have to get in skills training. With the better athletes, we have to convince them to look at things long term. That might mean a long practice the day before a meet, because it will pay off when it comes to sectionals."

Hanging over everyone's head are the qualifying times and distances to advance from the state sectionals to the finals. The top two qualifiers automatically advance, but all who match or surpass target times and distances also move.

"If you're in a tough sectional, and almost everyone in this area is, that could be tough," Coglianese said. "But it's hard to judge that right now."

"You preach to the kids, ‘Someone's going to take first and someone's going to take last, but you have to aim for the standard,' " Duckhorn said.

Hitting the standard gets you Downstate, even if you place eighth.

Oddly, last year a perfect spring ended the morning of the Class 3A Homewood-Flossmoor Sectional.

"Sectionals, we got poured on," Duckhorn remembered.

As a result, only in the long jump did more than two advance. At the Class 2A Hillcrest Sectional the following day, in clear weather, six advanced from the 100 meters, and all eight finalists from the 200 and the 300 hurdles advanced. That helped Hillcrest win a second straight 2A title and set up Oak Forest, Crete-Monee and T.F. North to finish 4-5-6.

Continuing bad weather will hamper a chance for a repeat performance. Maybe the IHSA can schedule duck racing as a state sideshow. Southland teams would lead that pack.

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