Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

If you go to the state track meet, you probably don’t even notice certain people. Such as the athletic trainers. Yet there they were, standing off to the side of the track, quietly telling the runners to get up off the ground after a race, to not just lay on the ground after exerting all that energy. The athletes kind of look at them like, what the heck are you saying to me? But it’s important.

Then there’s the meet clerk. You know, I don’t know half of what that person goes through, but my thanks to keeping this meet not only on schedule but even a little ahead.

Then there’s the guy who sits by the gate and keeps all the riff-raff from going on the track or into the infield. I like him. He’s funny, I never have to show him my press pass because he knows me and he’s always smiling.

There’s the young kids up here in the press box who make the copies of all the results and put them into folders and boxes for the media. Huge. (WSU’s Todd is the man behind all that, though. He’s so even-keeled and gets whatever is missing.)

There’s the announcers who keep everything interesting, letting us know facts on all the competitors. Read this for more on them.

There’s Kaye Pearce, the former executive director of the Kansas State High School Activities Association, who some have called the grim reaper for this reason — “Will the xx coach please see Kaye Pearce.”  You know what that means — your team or athlete was disqualified. Ouch.

There’s the awards people — announcing who won, getting them all together to stand on the awards stand.

I’m watching the 1A boys 3200 right now. This is not exciting. I’m sorry. No offense to distance runners, but it’s not. If you love this race, feel free to ream me.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 7:01 p.m. and is filed under Track. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.