A week ago Saturday morning, I was down on the track at Charlotte — learning that meet officials had limited throwers and horizontal jumpers to four attempts instead of the usual six. This was the crunch day of the meet, when events that had been canceled Friday night (due to a lightning storm) were rolled over to the next day. The Games Committee decided that they had the authority to limit throws and jumps to accommodate the schedule. Well, the anger hasn’t subsided. What follows is an exchange between Tim Muller, an M55 thrower, and Carroll DeWeese of the Games Committee.

Tim Muller sent this note, titled “Open Letter to the USATF & National Championship Committee”:
The decision to change the format of certain field events on last Saturday of the National Championships (discus and horizontal jumps) was incredibly stupid and inconsiderate to the athletes, totally ruining the championship flavor of the events, and the judgment or decision to do completely ignored the very spirit and intent of the championships.
Since I was not present at the meeting where the decision was made to change the format to four attempts in the Saturday events and have no finals, nor was there anything published that explained why it happened, I must believe the officials at the discus event who told me the decision was made 1.) because the weather delay forced the jumpers’ schedule to be compressed and 2.) The officials were getting tired because of the heat and humidity, and 3.) They wanted to be finished so everyone could attend the bar-b-que.
To that I can only say weather delays to events happen and the officials that chose Charlotte as a venue should have been more diligent in establishing a schedule that allowed for some weather delay to be built in. The entire evening Saturday was available but not used — why?
Extreme heat, humidity, and rain are all very common in August in North Carolina and should have been anticipated. The weather delay doesn’t create an extenuating circumstance that allowed a rule change that then resulted in ruining the championships for those competitors on Saturday. There were many disgruntled throwers who may or may not come forward and complain as I am, but they were certainly vocal Saturday.
Who are the national championships for — the officials or the athletes? Thursday, Friday, and Sunday competitors in the discus were all allowed the three preliminary throws and three final throws. How could you possibly ignore those competing on Saturday and single them out with such a poor decision?
And, I might add, contrary to the USATF Rules that clearly state the national championships will have three prelim and three final attempts in the throws!
The discus competition for the M50 group (as well as the other discus competitors on Saturday) was relegated to a Senior Olympics format of four attempts and no finals. In fact, the winner of one flight of throwers wasn’t able to actually compete against the two throwers who beat him because they were in the other flight! Preposterous!
If I had known the format of the event was to be that of the Senior Olympics, I would not have invested nearly $3,000 to travel over 2000 miles and compete. Which is also why I don’t travel to the national Senior Olympics either. The best part of the USATF competition, especially at the National Championships, is the re-structuring of the competitors into the reverse order for the finals — just like having several prelim and semi heats in running events. Plus, now this year, a final re-ordering for the last throw is introduced.
That was done to make the event more exciting, no? And then it is ruined by a committee more concerned about the officials being tired than the athletes! Since I was prevented from having the total number of throws I was entitled to (we got 4 of 6), I believe I should be entitled to 1/3 of my entry fee refunded. Who will take care of that for me?
I didn’t see any running events forced to skip their semi or finals. Why weren’t the sprints on Saturday competed with just the prelim heats and then the best time gets the gold medal?? Why force the throwers (apparently second class citizens) into doing so?
Another very inconsiderate and disturbing event took place during the M55 discus event. The 200 meter sprint was being held with the start adjacent to the discus cage. Just as I was to enter to cage for my second attempt, I was asked to step back from the cage and let the 200 meter heat start. This inconsiderate move was very disturbing and disruptive to my concentration just prior to the throw.
Not only am I now limited to four attempts but now these attempts are disrupted because the throwers have to wait for the sprinters! Why wasn’t it the other way around? I truly believe I was denied a chance to win a national championship because of the actions that disrupted the event. I was improving each attempt and could have easily exceeded the longest throw recorded had I had two more attempts.
Finally, I think the committee charged with choosing the venue for the national championship should give serious consideration to making one or two sites the annual locations only. My vote would be for Eugene or San Diego and possibly another venue in the Midwest, far north of the Mason-Dixon Line. To think that the weather would not be a factor in having the championships in Charlotte is totally short-sighted and plain stupid!
Carroll DeWeese of the Games Committee replied:
Tim, you have created a strong, forthright, open letter that expresses the frustrations and concerns that you share with many other athletes. I am sure that your expression of emotions is just the tip of the iceberg.
I am sorry that the reasons for the change in format on Saturday were not more clearly communicated. Your letter gives me the opportunity to share why the Games Committee did what it did.
The Games Committee did not choose the location. The decision of the venue is made by at the USATF Annual Meeting by the athletes and delegates in attendance. As an active athlete, you just have to show up at the meeting and you will probably have a vote on all matters brought before the USATF Masters Committee. At the very least, you will have a voice. I encourage you and others who wish to have a voice in site selection to attend the Annual Meeting or talk to someone that you know can attend.
One problem in the selection process of a venue is that someone has to take the time and effort to make a proposal. In doing so, they bear the financial and other risks of putting on the meet. It is very hard to find people that are willing to make a bid to put on the meet. We are lucky to get a single bid each year.
Without such a bid, we would have no venue to hold the National Masters Championships. Sometimes we are fortunate and get 2 or 3 bids. This is nice for it allows the delegates to choose, but the downside is that we virtually never see the losing bidders again. It takes a lot of time and money for a bidder to put a bid package together. If you want better venues then you and others need to get desirable venues interested in making a bid and coming back if they are turned down the first time.
The Games Committee expected the heat but our initial concern was also the treat of lighting delays. The weather forecasts before the meet was indicating thunder storms everyday. We had huge numbers of competitors and many events to conduct. By procedure, we can fall behind a schedule but we should not get ahead of it.
We originally created a schedule that did not go deep into the evening, because we were concerned that we would have lighting delays. We wanted to get as much done each day as possible before we had to break for the lighting. Our hope was that after the storm had passed, we could pick up the remaining schedule during the same day and not have to go to the next day.
No one on the Committee anticipated that we would be shut down by the police on Thursday. Initially some of governmental authorities were talking about our having to cancel the meet entirely.
George Mathews met with police, fire, and university officials and got an agreement allowing us to continue the meet provided the following happened: the National Weather Bureau did not have a heat advisory in effect, we had more on-site medical support, we had more fluids available, and we did not have additional instances of having to call upon the fire department EMS services.
The crisis was created on Thursday when the governmental EMS response system was overloaded due to calls by track medical for support. Three people were taken to the hospital; three people were told that they could no longer compete that day; and forty six people reported to the paramedic unit at the track.
The local track medical people said that they probably could have handled and prevented many of the problems if they had more people. The Meet Director had decided not to have the additional medical support against the advice of his own medical personnel.
Once the governmental and university authorities set the conditions under which the meet would be allowed to operate, the Meet Director indicated that he did not have the money to fulfill these additional requirements. Except for providing some Gatorade for the officials and some additional ice but no electrolyte for the athletes, he failed to act.
Until action was taken, we were prohibited from continuing the meet. By 4 pm, the Meet Director had not contacted the Medic EMTs so George Mathews contacted them and contracted with them to be on site the rest of the meet. The normal rate is $100/hour but he got them to agree to no charge. George purchased 800 bottles of Gatorade to give out to the athletes.
We lost 6 hours of possible meet time on Thursday and another 6 hours on Friday due to the heat advisory probation of governmental and university authorities. We had compressed some of the schedule on Friday to make up events delays on Thursday. After only two hours of competition on Friday, we had to stop due to lighting following a university protocol of which we were never advised, although we had consistently asked about such.
I was tracking the storm by radar and advised George that it appeared that it would go on for the night. Thirty minutes after we stopped we called competition off for the rest of the day so that the athletes and officials could get some rest. It stormed throughout the night.
I am not exactly how far we were behind on field events at this point, but we had 6 more hours of track events on the schedule that we had to move to the next day. Between the heat and lighting delays, we had lost 18 hours of possible meet time on the first two days.
While the athletes were able to rest, the Games Committee worked with the referees, the Coordinator of Officials, and others to create the proposed schedule for the next day. We were expecting severe weather as early as mid-afternoon on Saturday, which would have caused us to call off the meet for the rest of the day.
The Coordinator of Officials advised us that many officials were in bad shape and would not be able to work unless we got some relief for them. This was both an issue of safety for the officials and could have significantly slowed or stopped competition. Without officials, we can not have competitions.
Dick Hotchkiss in a separate communication to you noted the sacrifice that these officials make so that the athletes can compete. All have to pay their own transportation and many other costs. Each official has several hundred to several thousand dollars of out-of-pocket costs.
Meet management did not provide adequate support to the officials. The starters, for example, were supplied only 350 shells from meet management for the entire meet. They quickly ran out and then used their own shells. Each time they fired their gun, it was costing them out-of-pocket about 50 cents. The clerks quickly ran out of the pins used to put on bibs.
The Games Committee got some pins for them, but the rest they supplied out-of-pocket. In the road walk, the Meet Director had not contracted for or supplied any timing device. We had no timing for the Road Walk until one of the UNCC coaches supplied stopwatches out of his office about 5 minutes before the race was to start.
On Friday night, we were faced with the serious possibility of not completing all events by the end of the day Saturday due to the condition of officials and the impending mid-afternoon lighting forecasts. If we could not complete the events by the end of the day, many athletes would be gone the next day due to travel commitments.
The people involved in creating the revised schedule agreed that due to the extraordinary circumstances that we needed to go to the 4 jump and throw format. Maybe you would have made a different call. We were faced with the very real possibility of postponing or canceling events.
If we had postponed to Sunday, many athletes and officials would have been gone due to prior travel commitments. If enough officials were not available we would have had to cancel the events altogether.
We set the schedule so that field and track events would, if not delayed, be completed before 7 pm on Saturday. We wanted to give hope to the officials that if they stayed at the task and kept events moving then they could attend the banquet – one of the few awards offered officials. Our intent was that if the predicted storm can early and passed, we would still work the events after the 7 pm time, if the weather allowed.
You should know that the banquet is prepaid and prescheduled for both the athletes and the officials. If we had to have competition during the banquet period, many of the athletes that had paid to attend would be unable to attend. Hundreds of athletes had paid to attend. The banquet is a time for officials and athletes to come together and provides an opportunity for athletes to express their appreciation to the officials.
If you attended, you will note that the officials were not there. At the last minute the Games Committee found out that the Meet Director had decided on his own that the officials would be fed in an inferior room in another building without any entertainment separate from the athletes.
Due to the outstanding efforts of the Coordinator of Officials, Tony Wayne, we had a group of officials that could run an Olympic Trials or other major meet. Knowing this, we gave them a very aggressive time schedule on Saturday to make up for all the lost time.
In the running events, we had less than a one minute time allowance between the expected finishing time of each race and the start of the next race. The officials made it work and we finished the last race about one minute behind schedule. The expected storm came just before the last race started. I convinced university officials to give us an extra 2 minutes before clearing the field. We cleared the field as soon as the race was over.
You asked why we had semi-finals in some of the running events despite the extraordinary circumstances. In many lane races we had over 50 competitors in a single five-year age category. We had no option but to push the races the next day if we could not get them done on Saturday. We figured that if worse got to worst we could cancel or significantly delay the relays on Sunday while we caught up.
We do not have the same flexibility with field events due to facility constraints. Due to safety and other concerns, many events can not be conducted at the same time. In scheduling the field events, we have to work with the facility limitations. Even so, you should note that the last field events on Sunday still could not be scheduled until after the start of the relays on Sunday.
Once we got lucky and did not have the rain until later than we expected on Saturday, we were able to almost catch up on both field and track events. We changed back to 6 throws and jumps on Sunday for exactly the reasons that you state. This is a USATF National Championship. Based upon all the information that we had, we expected to be able to complete events on Sunday without heat or rain delays during the planed event schedule.
By the way, Sunday was no picnic. I will not go into all the details, but we had continuing failures of performance by the Meet Director. This includes everything from insufficient ice and electrolyte, overflowing porta-potties, lack of staff for the awards presentations, insufficient supplies, and no shuttles from the dorms to the dining hall.
Each member of the Games Committee at Charlotte is an active athlete and all but I actually competed in at least one event each in Charlotte. We have an athlete focus. From your point of view, maybe we should have done some things differently. We dealt with the issues as best we could give the weather, the governmental and university authorities, the lack of planning and leadership by the Meet Director, and our concern to not cancel any event and to provide an opportunity for athletes to compete prior to having to leave due to prior transportation arrangements.
The good new is that we have learned much from this meet. We plan some changes in contracts, process, scheduling, and many other aspects of these meets. I believe the athletes learned much also. They were exposed to some of the challenges in a meet and saw officials respond remarkably well given the circumstances. They may become more aware of the impact of choosing meets in hot weather locations. They may be willing to accept changes in the structure and format of these meets so that we never, ever have such a crisis that we even consider 4 jumps and throws in place of 6.
If there are changes in the format of these meets that you and others would like to see in the future, please contact the appropriate Games Committee member. We do not ever want to go through this situation again. We will be considering what is needed to proactively avoid problems. We want to make the meets desirable to athletes, officials, meet management, and local organizing committees.
We need everyone. We want the Masters Movement to grow and flourish.