It’s time to revamp state track qualifying

Updated: April 27, 2011 7:34PM

One chance.

That’s all a participant in track gets to qualify for the IHSA’s championship.

It’s been that way forever.

Make it to state at the sectional or stay home.

It’s time for a change.

The sectional-only system made complete sense in the day of the stopwatch, when eight timers clicked their watches at the gun and clicked them again when the runner in their lane crossed the finish line. The comparison was against the other runners, and against a static qualifying standard.

Finish in the top two or match or surpass the standard and you’re in. Don’t, and you’re out.

Today, one chance need not be the way to go.

Today, with the ease of electronic timing, high school track should move to the college format, which allows automatic qualifying at electronically timed meets, no matter when they’re held.

This would do three things.

First, it would mitigate the unfairness caused by bad weather. As we noted last week, last year’s boys Class 3A Homewood-Flossmoor Sectional was plagued by rain. That slowed times, and despite the quality of the field only the minimum of two runners and relay from each race advanced to the finals. Twenty of the 38 qualifiers didn’t hit the state standard.

The following day, on a dry track, the Class 2A Hillcrest Sectional qualified 80 participants, with up to eight runners — the entire finals field — moving on in several races.

Second, it would eliminate the rarer problem that came up at Hillcrest last year, where nine runners in one race met the state qualifying standard but the ninth runner couldn’t advance downstate because he didn’t make the sectional final, so thick was the competition.

Finally, it would supply an alternate, if earlier, date to qualify for someone who happened to be injured on the day of the sectional meet. (All this would also apply to field events, where a tape measure always has been used.)

Colorado went to a performance-based qualifying system for its two largest classes in 2009 and since has expanded it to all classes, generally advancing the top 18 runners or field athletes in each class to the state finals.

In Colorado’s case, it eliminated its version of sectionals and depends only on the qualifying system, including adjusted times for hand-timed distance races.

The NCAA uses, and the IHSA should go to, a dual system taking electronically timed results from any meet as well as results from sectionals, many of which are electronically timed.

“We’ve got to go to multiple qualifying,” T.F. North coach Moses Hulbert said last week, referencing last year’s soggy sectional at H-F and this year’s dreadful weather. “It’s more fair.”

And more fair is what high school sports should be all about.

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