I have not missed participating in a season of track and field or cross country since 2004. From competing for a youth club and later the Griz and then as a high school coach my spring and fall days have followed a nearly identical regimen: around 3:30, I throw on my running shoes and head out to the track.
This spring however I was unable to juggle the responsibilities of my day job at the Beacon with reliably being an assistant coach at Glacier High School. For the first time in nearly two decades, I didn’t show up to an official track practice once.
The one thing I couldn’t miss however was the state track and field championships, held in Butte the last weekend in May. The Class AA and Class A meets were held jointly, meaning the sports reporter in me didn’t have to make a choice between covering the Whitefish girls’ presumptive state title, or watching the action from the Wolfpack.
Reporting on a track meet, even when only striving to cover four schools out of two dozen, is a whiplash-inducing sport on its own, made more difficult by the caliber of athletes in the Flathead Valley.
For most events there are roughly 58 seconds or less to photograph the athletes, write down an observation from the event, and then head to the finish where a half-dozen other sports writers are milling around, waiting to snag champions for tired victory interviews.
I’ll admit to a modicum of bias while cheering for Glacier’s Sam Ells during all three of his distance events. For two years I’ve watched Ells work to become one of the best runners to come from the Flathead – no easy feat in a place of Morleys and Perrins. Watching his victory in the 1600m was one of the best moments I’ve experienced on a track.
Track and field is unique because there are both individual and team stories to tell. Each athlete that wins an event could spawn an 800-word profile on how they got there (Or a 150-word Best of Preps blurb, coming to a Flathead Beacon near you next week). Add up a half-dozen such profiles and you’ve got the story of a team victory.
There’s also the lesser told story that spells victory for one team, but defeat for another.
Most coaches agonize over hypotheticals. Glacier’s coaches shared with me the projected points every team could possibly earn in each event. After every result the scores were recalculated to see if the Wolfpack was under or over the projection.
What clinched it was the 100-meter dash.
Of all track events it’s the most straight forward. There are no tactics at play, no thought other than “go.”
Typically, the winner of the preliminary heat of the 100m dash at any level, wins the final. Rarely do athletes move up more than two to three spots between their seed and their finish.
The Class AA prelims had Glacier and Sentinel runners finish seventh and eighth, nonscoring positions. The projections for team titles reflected that. No points for either school, give or take a few. With that Glacier had a clear path to championship over Sentinel.
I watched three Glacier coaches refresh the results on their phone simultaneously and see the path to victory close. With a lifetime best Sentinel’s runner won, scoring 10 points.
The Wolfpack lost by 9.
Glacier coach Arron Deck summed it up after the meet: “Sometimes you can get caught up in what your team is doing and lose sight of the fact that you’re facing the best athletes in the state. Hats off to them.”
I’m sure the profile on that sprinter was a great one.